Listen again to Sachin Tendulkar, just after his 175 at Hyderabad: “It was one of my best innings... but in the end it was very disappointing.” In that summation of an exceptional innings, he could be seen to be recalling an entire career in the service of Indian cricket. Twenty years ago, Tendulkar debuted for India and it did not take long for him to understand that he would bear a larger responsibility than should have needed to be his as a 16-year old. At Sialkot, in the last Test of that debut series against Pakistan, he was injured, but he refused to retire hurt. He’d later recall: “It didn’t feel nice, what with blood flowing from my nose, but I couldn’t leave, for the side was not doing well.”

That, then, is the burden Tendulkar has borne: he has not been judged on his performance alone but on whether he managed to take his team to victory. It’s fair. In team sports, great players must be judged by how they remake their squad. For vast stretches of his career, that is how it was with Tendulkar. An emblematic moment in his Test career, therefore, is seen to be the Chennai Test of January 1999. Set a target of 271 by Pakistan to win, an ailing Tendulkar was out on 136, leaving his mates alone to get the remaining 17 runs with three wickets in hand. They did not. The acute consciousness of not seeing his team through was written on Tendulkar’s face on Thursday night. But to see his innings through this narrative would be mistaken.

... contd.