As the master blaster gets set to play his 200th and final Test, we pay a tribute to his glorious career by looking back at his top ten Test centuries.
114 at Perth, February 1992
The setting: This was the fifth and final Test of the series held Down Under in 1991-92. India were having a disastrous time as they often have had away from home, and had already lost the series by the time the final Test at Perth got underway. India had lost three Tests at Brisbane, Melbourne and Adelaide and somehow managed to draw the Test at Sydney owing to Ravi Shastri’s double hundred and a wonderful century from Sachin Tendulkar. Being 3-0 down in the series, the only thing they had to play for at Perth was pride, in other words they somehow had to avoid a 4-0 embarrassment.
Teams:
India: Kris Srikkanth, Navjot Sidhu, Sanjay Manjrekar, Sachin Tendulkar, Dilip Vengsarkar, Mohd Azharuddin (capt), Manoj Prabhakar, Kapil Dev, Kiran More (wk), Venkatapathy Raju and Javagal Srinath
Australia: Mark Taylor, Wayne Phillips, David Boon, Allan Border (captain), Dean Jones, Tom Moody, Ian Healy (wk), Merv Hughes, Paul Reiffel, Craig McDermott and Mike Whitney
The Tendulkar factor: This was among Tendulkar’s earliest hundreds, and his second of the series. But, the Perth hundred is considered among his best ever in international cricket owing to the conditions under which it was scored as well as the quality of the opposition. Perth is rated among the bounciest wicket in the world, and for Tendulkar to come up with a ton on his first visit to the venue, and that too against the likes of Hughes, Reiffel, McDermott and Whitney was fantastic in every sense, especially since he was a boy among men.
The most incredible part of Tendulkar’s innings was that he looked in no kind of trouble at all against a great bowling attack comprising of four quality pace bowlers. McDermott, Hughes and Whitney all were genuinely quick, but Tendulkar managed to get on top of them and dominate all of these great names, who had undone some of the best batsmen in the business. Replying to Australia’s challenging first-innings total of 346, Tendulkar single-handedly ensured India ended with a somewhat respectable total. Tendulkar’s brilliant 114 came off only 161 balls with 16 fours and lasted a little over 220 minutes.
Tendulkar featured in a fighting ninth wicket-partnership with Kiran More, who made 43. It was during this alliance that Tendulkar’s ability to work well in a partnership with the lower order came to the fore. The innings also gave world cricket a glimpse of what Indian cricket was to be like for the next few years -- Tendulkar playing a lone hand, and India going on to lose the Test. India were set a massive 442 to win the first innings, and with Tendulkar falling early, India collapsed to 141all out. Tendulkar couldn’t prevent India from going 4-0 down, but he had arrived for sure.
--By A Cricket Analyst
