Tendulkar, whose career achievements have reached the pointwhere he rewrites the record books every time he steps onto an internationalcricket pitch, will start his 189th test Thursday. Yet there will be somethingunfamiliar about the teammates alongside him in southern India. Neither VVS Laxman,nor Rahul Dravid will be there. The departure leaves Tendulkar as the only survivor of the golden generation ofmiddle-order batsmen.
Tendulkar is now, at 39, the oldest active player ininternational cricket “ some achievement, as he started, at age 16, as theyoungest player ever for India. It inevitably raises once more the question ofhis own retirement. “I don’t think like that. It will come when it has to come,”he said.
But there is no real reason why he should quit. “I amenjoying cricket, and I’ll continue enjoying, because as long as I ampassionate about cricket, you know it makes sense,” he told the media lastmonth.
He will clearly miss Laxman. “When I walk out to play inHyderabad, I will feel a deep void. A void that can never be filled,” Tendulkarsaid on Twitter, lamenting that “my dear friend VVS Laxman, one of the bestplayers Indian cricket has seen and I have played with, will no longer be withme.” Cricket fans “ who have long joked that those initials, standing forVangipurappu Venkata Sai, really mean Very Very Special “ will share his senseof loss. Laxman played in 134 tests, scoring 8,781 runs, including a high of281 against Australia at Kolkata in 2001, considered the greatest innings everplayed for India. It turned overwhelming defeat into sensational victory,terminating in the most spectacularly unexpected manner possible Australia’sall-time record run of consecutive victories in tests.
He will be missed most of all for a beguiling batting style.Laxman was the latest exemplar of a glorious Indian tradition that dates backto Kumar Shri Ranjitsinhji, a hereditary prince who played in and for Englandin the late 19th century.
