Beyond twelve thousand – dream or reality

Sports

International cricket has now reached saturation point. From a relaxing, often described as a noble sport, the game has reached a stage when it’s fully involved professionally, wrapped in political and thriving financially. The demands on the players are heavy and their every move is scrutinized. They get as much cricket as they can ask for test cricket, one day cricket and now T20 cricket. Just as much as the demands are high the opportunities are also many.

Twenty five years ago not many would have predicted that a batsman would go beyond scoring twelve thousand test runs. Now Sachin Tendulkar has climbed the Everest. The first holder of this record was Australian batsman Clem Hill who stood out in the early days. When he quit in 1902 he had gathered 3412 test runs.

By 1924 when Jack Hobbs called it a day his tally stood at 5410. Hobbs played on comeback very late in life and in fact played first class cricket, well into his fifties and was scoring runs. England’s answer to Donald Bradman was Walter Hammond, though not in the same mould as Bradman, Hammond was an accumulator of runs and his run tally was 7249 (1937).

Hammond’s record stood for the longest period of time - thirty three years. Partly because there was no cricket for five years because of the Second World War and partly because, many players opted out of the game early, to pursue other careers. Cricket was not able to sustain the livelihood of cricketers in the nineteen fifties, sixties and well into the seventies, until Kerry Packer came along and revolutionized the game.
It was another Englishman Colin Cowdrey, who went past Hammond. By 1960 Cowdrey had reached 7624 runs. A couple of years later the great West Indian allrounder Garfield Sobers overtook Cowdrey and went beyond eight thousand runs (8032). Geoffrey Boycott who also had a very long career for England took over the mantle next, aggregating 8114 by 1981.

With Sri Lanka also joining the test ranks in 1982, the number of nations playing had reached eight. Test tours were also becoming regular. The “little master” from India – Sunil Gavaskar stepped in and made runs in all parts of the world. He became the first batsman to have an untarnished record both home and away. He took his tally of runs to beyond ten thousand and by 1983 had amassed 10,122.

The little master at work

Many felt that it would be a while before any player reached that many runs. It took ten years as the dogged Australian batsman and captain Alan Border slowly but steadily gathered runs to go another thousand ahead to quit on 11,174.

Since the turn of the century the race has been between Brian Lara and Sachin Tendulkar. Tendulkar began his career at the tender age of sixteen and in terms of age had a six year handicap over Lara. They were contrasting in style, one left handed and the other right. The common feature was that they were both brilliant and could tame any attack or any bowler. Unexpectedly, Lara quit all forms of international cricket after the 2007 World Cup. He had overtaken Border and ended with 11,953 runs. Sachin Tendulkar was expected to overtake Lara and get into the throne. Injuries and a recent poor series against Sri Lanka slowed his progress until some weeks ago, in the second test against Australia.

Tendulkar took 152 tests and 247 innings to reach the milestone, at an average of 54.17. Amongst those runs are thirty nine centuries (the most by any player) and fifty half centuries. He has been equally comfortable playing pace and spin and both at home and away. Most batsmen fare better at home than away. In his case it’s marginal. Creditably he averages 53.70 in away tests, with twenty three centuries. On the bouncy pitches of Australia his average is 58.53 while on the seaming English pitches the average is even better at 62.

His thirst for runs hasn’t waned over passing time. Tendulkar like Sri Lanka’s world record holder for wickets, Muttiah Muralitharan are bound to be around for a while longer. Maybe now we could say confidently that no one will ever match their feats!

= Ranil Abeynaike is a former Sri Lanka cricketer and curator of the SSC

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