What Sachin Tendulkar has that Don Bradman didn’t

Exactly 77 years ago to the day, in Melbourne, Harold Larwood instigated what eventually became known as bodyline when he struck Bill Woodfull, the opener, near the heart during a four-day match between MCC and an Australian XI. It was to herald the most rancorous series of all time.

Douglas Jardine was not playing in the match and it was his deputy, Bob Wyatt, who carried out the instructions to try “leg theory” as a precursor for what was to follow. Donald Bradman, whose gargantuan scoring the theory was intended to curb, failed twice in the match, falling to Larwood on each occasion for 36 and 13 — a sign of his troubles ahead.

This week Sachin Tendulkar celebrated 20 years as an international cricketer. There followed a slew of paeans to the India batsman’s longevity and greatness from some of the best writers on the game. The only discordant note came from Kapil Dev, who believes, oddly, that Tendulkar has failed to make full use of his talent. They should make Kapil a judge on Strictly Come Dancing.

If these two strands have little in common, bear with me for a moment. Images of Tendulkar have adorned newspapers and websites throughout the week. Images, mostly, of the “Little Master” at the crease, compact and balanced. So compact and balanced, in fact, that Bradman said Tendulkar was the modern player whose method most closely resembled his own.

There was, though, one crucial difference, which the image of Tendulkar on these pages on Monday highlighted. Perched on top of Tendulkar’s head, adorned with the tricolour of India, was a bright blue helmet and, for good measure, a grille to protect his features.

Wearing blue, Tendulkar was batting in a one-day game, but had the image been of him batting in whites, there is a good chance that, along with a helmet, Tendulkar would have been wearing an arm guard and a chest guard, too. He is always amply protected.

Which is not to say that Tendulkar lacks bravery. Indeed, he proved his “manhood” in his first Test series when Waqar Younis bloodied his nose and Tendulkar refused treatment and carried on batting. He wore a grille from then on, though, so that when James Anderson sent a ball crashing into it at Trent Bridge in July 2007, Tendulkar was able to shake his head and carry on as if he had been hit with a wet sponge.

Tendulkar’s method suggests that he would be little inconvenienced by not wearing a helmet. He does not hook, nor does he plunge on to the front foot. And he watches the ball like a hawk. Nevertheless, would he have lasted as long, would he have scored as many runs, would that blow to his face by Anderson not have affected his confidence in any way? We cannot know for sure.

The advent of protection for batsmen from the late 1970s has been the biggest change to the game since the introduction of overarm bowling. It has altered profoundly the balance between bat and ball and changed batting techniques, to the point at which modern batsmen (Matthew Hayden and Kevin Pietersen, for example) can walk down the pitch to 90mph balls and where some (Justin Langer, say) can play on despite numerous blows to the head.

That is before we even start talking about the strokes, such as the overhead “Dilscoop” that are routinely played in limited-overs matches, which would be a non-starter without helmets.

Bradman’s average plummeted in the Bodyline series, when the need for raw courage was added to the equation. A few modern players would suffer, too. The ball is no softer now and the bowlers no less quick, but standing at the crease knowing that you can be killed demands a different level of courage from the realisation that you might just get hurt.

As someone who did not wear a helmet throughout his career, Viv Richards knows what it is like to bat with just a cap on, which is why, on his short trip to London this week, he poured scorn on modern batsmanship. It is, he said, no longer a man’s game, more like a pampered nursery where batsmen use body protection as a “form of staying power”.

Richards was a magnificent player, fuelled by a pride that made him scorn a helmet, arm guard or chest guard, even in an era when the game became nastier and more brutish. I have a lot of sympathy with him. Unlike boxing, say, which has remained true to its pugilistic roots, making comparisons between eras so much easier, the nature of batting has changed so fundamentally that it renders comparisons meaningless.

Nobody, bar Richards probably, is crazy enough to suggest that helmets should be banned. Nobody wants to see people dying for their sport. But to suggest that Tendulkar — or, indeed, any modern, armoured or, to use Richards’s phrase, “pampered” player — is the best ever is demeaning to those former greats who stood at the crease in the knowledge that their next ball could be their last.

England left with one too many Cooks on Twenty20 menu

There is at present a disconnect between the England selectors and the rest of the cricket community.

I guarantee that if a poll was conducted about Alastair Cook’s suitability at the top of the order in Twenty20 internationals, nobody outside the county boundaries of Essex would say that he should be opening for England. Further, I would be amazed if anyone within Essex feels as the selectors do.

How does this happen? It is what Charles Perrow, the sociologist, would term a “normal accident”. Not normal as in a regular occurrence, but normal as in the result of an interaction of a number of errors that are readily explicable within the workings of a complex system.

The demise of Challenger, the space shuttle, was an example of a “normal accident”: it blew up precisely because of the result of a number of these failures.

The selectors want to put in place succession planning, so they are keen for Cook to play one-day cricket; Cook played well towards the end of the season in shorter formats for Essex, signalling a more expansive game; Andrew Strauss, the England captain, has said that he does not want to play Twenty20 cricket, so despite the injuries he remained on the sidelines.

All understandable errors that lead to the car crash that is Cook opening in Twenty20 international cricket. Forget captaincy, he should be nowhere near the team in the first place.

‘No, FT. No comment,’ says Strauss

There were many reasons why, in the mid to late 1990s, I argued that it would be to the ECB’s advantage to introduce central contracts: a stabilising influence on team selection; more of a sense of team; fresher and less injury-prone fast bowlers; more contented players thanks to better remuneration.

One more dawned on me this week, reading Andrew Strauss’s interview with Lionel Barber, the Editor of the Financial Times: muzzling the England captain.

Barber asked him who was to blame for the Allen Stanford fiasco. “I’ve got to say the ECB,” Strauss said. “But there’s not a huge amount I can say on this, unfortunately.”

Why not? “Well, because I’m employed by the ECB.”

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