Dec 7, 1998

It is not the footwork, not the muscles but in the mind that victory is planned. When Muhammad Ali lay back against the ropes and let brutal George Foreman pound him during their fight in Zaire in 1974, pandemonium reigned. It so violated conventional boxing wisdom that writer George Plimpton turned to author Norman Mailer at the ringside and screamed, "It's a fix." Ali instinctively knew after one round he could not dance for 15 rounds; but he knew too that Foreman would punch himself out and tire. Ali won but not even his corner had realised his deception.

Similar seductions are manufactured in the head of Sachin Tendulkar, his grey cells gathering together to plan a majestic conspiracy against some unwary bowler. One measure of Tendulkar's genius is his immaculate judgement of length, to know by the trajectory of the ball whether to step forward or back. This is not merely a gift of a man with a hawk's eyes, but of a batsman who must have been a crystal-ball gazer in a previous life.

"It's about reading the bowler's mind," he says.

Anticipation?

"Anticipation, yes. But it also depends on the previous 4-5 deliveries and what you've done and what the bowler feels about it and what he's going to do. And accordingly you react. And because you're ready it looks like you had a lot of time."

And then he hits you in the solar plexus with the ultimate deception.

"It is not just that I expected him to do this. Sometimes I compel the bowler to do this. I play in a particular fashion intentionally so he does something and I am prepared."

Is it possible that he knows Jack Fingleton once wrote of Sir Donald Bradman, "Bowlers bowled to him the way he made them"?

Tendulkar is in an expansive mood, he illustrates his point. Many years ago in a one-dayer, he tells you, Kiwi Gavin Larsen bowled the first few balls of the over pitched up and Tendulkar played them on the front foot straight to the fielder's hands. Larsen's next three balls were pitched short but still Tendulkar played them on the front foot. At this point Jadeja came to him and asked, "You were batting so well. Why are you now playing predetermined shots?" Replied Tendulkar: "I'll speak to you after the over."

So what happened on the last ball?

"Larsen pitched it short again, except this time I was waiting on the back foot. And I hit it for six. I told Jadeja this was what I was trying to do."

He is a modest genius, he says it doesn't work every time.

Champions just know. They understand their greatness, they know when their moment has arrived. In 1983, John McEnroe said, "If I lose the Wimbledon final (to Chris Lewis) I will jump off the Empire State building." (He didn't). Every night as matches came down to one last shot to win Jordan wasn't handed the ball, he demanded it.

Watch this, Jordan's face would say as he exploded down the court.

Watch me, Tendulkar's body language says, as his bat flashes like Excalibur under the lights. As Ashok Mankad says, "He is not arrogant but his art is arrogant."

Five times this year India has won one-day tournaments, four times he has scored centuries in the final. He cannot walk through doors or leap over tall buildings yet but he is a maker of miracles.

One began in the dressing room against Australia in the second innings of the first Test in Chennai this year. What happened?

"They had a 40-run lead and I said this will be the innings of a player's life. Because 75 plus by any player would be a big score in the second innings and would help us win the game."

So how did you get chosen to play that innings?

"Well, Anshuman Gaekwad caught me when everyone went away said, 'I want you to score,' and I said, 'I will get it for you, don't worry'."

Mr Don't Worry scored 155 not out. India won the Test.

Last year when he won Wimbledon, playing absolutely mesmerising tennis, Pete Sampras admitted, "I have no fear." Tendulkar is imperturbable too. In the white heat of battle when the crowd is an orchestra of the insane, players get muddled. Yet to this chaos the champion brings clarity. Says Jadeja: "Your mind's not working and he calmly strolls up to you and says, 'Open your stance'. He has a stronger mind."

So, the tougher the situation the more exciting for you, right?

No, says Tendulkar. It is about not letting the moment arrive at all. "I don't really say I wait for a big situation. I just like to maintain my standard. Why should I wait for the situation to raise my standard of play? Whereas if I continue the same way that situation may not arise at all."

Some things about genius we will never understand.

But this much we do know, Sachin Tendulkar does not take his genius for granted. He cossets it, cuddles it, hones it. "When we were children," recalls his friend and Mumbai player Atul Ranade, "our coach would put a one-rupee coin on the stumps and if the bowlers bowled a batsman he got it, if a batsman lasted a 10-minute session he got it. Sachin would go to all the four nets, bat and collect the money." The commitment continues. The net is his temple.

Clearly, as much as he resembles McEnroe in his instinctive mastery of his sport, Tendulkar has embraced the work ethic the American disdained. Ivan Lendl would be pleased. When the disciplined Czech failed to win the US Open, he had a similar court surface installed in his backyard. He then reached the next six Open finals. It is a theorem that has not eluded Tendulkar.

Stories abound over how he prepared for Shane Warne's arrival, getting leg spinners to bowl to him round the wicket on to a patch of rough. Yet here lie his little secrets. It was not just the physical adjustments of feet and eye and stance he was preparing for, but the cerebral battle that was to unfold. As he explains, "After my double hundred against Australia in Mumbai, I told my brother, 'Warne hasn't bowled a single ball round the wicket. He's waiting for the big game and I know the moment I go in, during a crunch situation when it matters the most he's going to come round the wicket and I have to practise for that.' I had practised, but I said I have to be prepared mentally as well." He was.

The game for him is as much an art as science, as much bold invention as dreary routine. On match days he sits and eats in his room. When he reaches the ground he commences a particular ritual. "I stand behind the wicket and visualise where the bowler will bowl and what shot I will play." When he goes in, he tells himself, keep watching the ball. Then it all -- the ego, the courage, the belief, the work at nets, the eyes, the hands, the strength -- coalesces. And he makes magic.

Indeed, every piece of the jigsaw has its worth. He tells you his dipping averages during captaincy was not the burden of pressure -- "It was a coincidence that my poor form came then" -- but possibly the breakdown of his batting preparation. "I couldn't give too much time to my own batting. I was always thinking about my teammates, what he should be doing, what this guy should be doing. Right now I just think of myself, this is what I have to contribute, this is what everybody expects."

But it pecks away at his soul, this talk of captaincy. How could he have failed? In another sense, he does not think he was so hopeless. He never got the team he wanted and he led on tours to South Africa and the West Indies. Yet others see it differently. Says Manjrekar gently: "Don't expect him to be good at everything," then adds, "He is not naturally gifted as a captain." Mankad echoes common opinion when he says, "He expects so much, which is not wrong but the other players may not have had the ability to live up to it."

Yet snarls a Mumbai player, "Let's face it, he didn't get the support he wanted." Tendulkar is tetchy too. When you mention that a bowler said he was too intense, always coming up to offer advice, expecting things to happen instantaneously when instead they take time, he snapped. "No, we've always taken too much time, that's why I wanted things to happen there and then." It is an unfinished debate. Can he, this celestial lord of the batting universe, extend his creativity to another sphere? He says nothing but his silence tells you he has not forgotten.

For now though his batting dazzles. Someone mentions that instead of the thousand people who usually gather for the one-day matches between Mumbai and Gujarat, 12,000 arrived because Tendulkar was playing. It figures. In a nation short on heroes he is the only icon in residence. Says Manjrekar, "I tell you every time I see him I think God created him for the game of cricket."

Today he has been out cheaply, so now he sits in his chair peering out at the match. His face impassive like a Zen monk, he looks a man in private communion with himself. Thinking maybe of New Zealand, where he travels to in a week, of other reputations he will be asked to pulp. He is so complete a player that you think, my God one day there will be someone better than him.

For now, it doesn't seem possible.

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