How do you solve a problem like Sachin?

With Ricky Ponting finally calling time on his test career, not before time, so all eyes turned to India and the struggles of another of the true greats of his generation. It seems almost inconceivable that it will be twenty-three years this summer since I first saw Sachin Tendulkar play, a seventeen year old in Sunil Gavaskar style pads who made his maiden test hundred at Old Trafford that summer. It was obvious that he was going to be very good, but his record in the years since is mind boggling. Comparisons with Bradman are pointless, but it seems very likely that his record of one hundred international centuries will stand the test of time in the same way that 99.94 has.

Now, however, he is an increasing problem for the Indian team and for their selectors. Having laboured to his hundredth hundred he hasn’t scored a test century for over two years, a remarakable statistic given his propensity for three figure scores. A fighting seventy-six at Kolkata aside, he struggled against England’s attack, scoring just thirty-six runs in his other five innings and it was clear that the England bowlers saw him more as an opportunity to precipitate a collapse than as a legend of the game. Sourav Ganguly has spoken of Sachin’s desire to finish in a blaze of glory with a big score, but the risk is that he keeps going in fruitless pursuit of that objective at the expense both of his legacy and of the long term development of the team. The announcement of his retirement from ODIs suggests that he is in no hurry to fall on his test match sword just yet, so the selectors may well end up with the dilemma of either being the people who terminated the Little Master’s career or of seeing him clog up the Indian middle order for as long as he likes. Rather them than me.