' All rise ' and no fall for the Men in Blue

After having trounced at the hands of Sri-Lanka a couple of days ago, India didn't take too long to pay off the debt. Carrying the bell on Sri-lankan soil has always been an uphill task for teams across the globe. Hitherto, It's been no different for men in blue either but there were no Monday blues for them this time round. Given a not so resplendent record in SL and infamous unpredictable proclivity followed by an abashsed show against the same side put indians under immense pressure. They washed up the inglorious 'it's not what it's cracked up to be' image proving unpredictable to cynics this time. There are benefits too of having a vocally schizophrenic singer on Radio in country.

MSD's auxiliary marshalling has been par excellence. A captain is as good as his team and as they say he is riding his luck when things are hunky-dory at the moment but the credit should be given to him for his modus operandi of setting the record straight about what he expects from all and sundry as a unit. The whiz-kid of new times is au-fait the fact that fame has its price. It will be quite piquant to watch him when things unfold nasty in the way it did for the Aussies. Yuvi is at the pinnacle of his career and is having a ball on and off field. At times it is quite difficult to differentiate between a good and a bad ball when he is batting.

Numbers are quite deceptive. Statistics can be accurate but not necessarily true. It has to be accompanied with conviction to make a legend. Random figures like 92, 44, 59 and 14 would hypothetically make one think not beyond some individual's match scores. Having bagged 91 half centuries , 44 tons, 59 man of the match awards and 14 man of the series awards Sachin is far ahead of his contemporaries yet far from over. Little master's cricketing standards have remained unfazed and impervious to time and he has left a lot of talking mouths shut and a lot of shut mouths talking yet again. For him it's all work and no talk . He has seen it all, he has done it all. Age is strictly a case of mind over matter, if you don't mind it doesn't matter. A fact which went unnoticed during this match but should not go unmentioned. it took MSD 22 balls to score the first boundary which made tendulkar run for his scoring in ones and twos other than the 92 individual runs he scored during his knock of 138. Words can never be greater than the great man himself. Just as so often aggressive batsmen are unable to find their way through when their aggression is curbed. Tendulkar shows how to do it in a quagmire. The whimsical batsman's batsmanship exemplifies a naturally perfect blend of two archetypal batting genres different in nature en masse ! I.e sheer timing with appropriate placement (Sunil Gavaskar's ) and shoot at sight raw powerpacked strokeplay (Viv Richards). No wonder that these two legends possessing different batting styles were his idols during his childhood. If a flick made on his cricketing norms is fast forward @ 4 times the regular pace one would still wonder whether it's the primordial one or the tendulkar of present times. Only time on the screen will tell you that everything else remains the same for him except time. A few things don't have a sell by date, they only have versions. Notions were rife that sachin has never been a match winner. More likely than nought a match winner is awarded the man of the match or man of the series award. There are cynics who always have reasons to quibble. As Oscar Wilde puts it " We are all in gutter, but some of us are still looking at stars " . Numbers are eye-catching but they can be eye-opener too. The little genius is there to tell you that. Oops !.....or may be he is not.