Peter Roebuck muses here on ageing greats Brian Lara and Sachin Tendulkar as each batting icon runs his own steeple chase against time. Sentiments left aside, every leading cricketer needs to take a few ahead-of-the-game decisions about his playing future just around this "early to mid thirties" phase of his career, when every little stretch of 'poor form' starts getting viewed suspiciously without exception.
The game splitting up into two formats spiritually different from one another did nothing to aid such complex decisions. Jai Arjun Singh once wondered about the astonishing brevity of the graph of a cricketer's life in this blog. The archetypal modern player has a lot more incentives than his earlier counterparts for playing on. Personal milestones, dedication to the team's cause and love of the game are all there and are now joined by the crack of mass adulation of a growing global audience and thoughts of maximising financial returns in order to insure the very long post retirement life ahead. "Let me try one more season," he would probably tell himself at a corner of the dressing room while the youthful raise the decibels oblivious of his turmoil.
The trick is to tell playing on from staying on. A player who comes thus far in his career must walk this emotional tightrope to a longer career over the trap of carrying on beyond his "sell-by date" (to quote Jai) and time his departure from the great stage while the halo is still intact. He needs to do it sensing that gentle tap on the shoulder from Father Time, else he leaves himself at the mercy of earthlings named selectors. Going by the trends, this particular sense of timing is a rare gift even amongst players of sublime virtues.
Comments
You know, I don't think it really applies that much to the greats of the game. It's not the Sachins and the Laras this really applies to.
It reminds me of a story that Rod Marsh recounted about his own retirement, which was when Lillee and Chappell retired. Someone asked that doughty fighter but not world-beating fast bowler Rodney Hogg about HIS retirement, and Hoggy replied, "Mugs like me don't retire, they just get dropped."
Too true. The dangers of playing on too far are more like with Jason Gillespie, Saurav Ganguly, and Graeme Thorpe. The 'almost greats'. Those are the guys that we have to keep an eye on.
Posted by: Scott Wickstein at May 23, 2006 10:02 AM
Inherent in this argument is that is somehow 'indignity' in playing on and eventually getting 'dropped'. How many of us would give up our job just cos' we aren't quite as good as we used to be. One has battle on and play on, because the biggest regret is wondering if you retired to early, much better to get dropped and get it confirmed.
Posted by: Ram at May 24, 2006 7:02 PM
The above article doesn't apply to Sachin as he has not been fit enough to prove his calibre... I think some more time has to be given to Sachin before any decision is taken about Sachin.. But in the case of Lara there were many occassions when he could have proved his calibre..
Posted by: Arun.K at May 25, 2006 8:58 AM
I'm inclined to agree with Scott Wickstein here. The fact that Lara and Tendulkar are greats means that you can never, ever rule them out. Obviously every player only has a certain number of games in him, but you still can't underestimate them. Last summer Kerry O'keeffe publicly made this mistake regarding Lara, just days before breaking Border's record. See what I mean?
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