On This Day: Sachin Tendulkar scored 175 v mighty Aussie bowling attack

November 5, 2009: I still remember that date like it was yesterday. It has been six years and yet I can’t get over one of the most amazing innings I have seen.  If you hear the commentators when you watch the highlights, the sentence “what a privilege we’ve had to watch this man bat today” is used on multiple occasions.

The atmosphere in which I watched the game was amazing. I was in 1^st year of Degree College back then and it was the winter break. The family decided to visit a few temples in Gujarat to which I reluctantly agreed. The series was evenly poised at 2-2 the winner of this game would have an advantage in deciding the winner of the 7 match series. I had a Nokia 1100 with no internet connection, the only way I could track the game was All India Radio commentary in some village in Gujarat, whose name I fail to recall. Australia scored a daunting 350 at the back of a century from Shaun Marsh. On the radio I could only hear about the boundaries Cameron White and Mike Hussey hit at the end of the innings.

India had a task at their hands. People expected a good fight from the famed Indian batting line-up on a flat Hyderabad pitch. I too was looking for a TV so that I could watch the game. Alas! Not a single TV in the dharamshala we were staying at and no radios either. We went to yet another temple, 5^th that day and that is when I got a message from a friend, “Sachin is on fire!” I left the temple, frantically looking for a TV for a glimpse of the master and his brilliant innings. I found a small crowd gather around a shop, just like they showed on TV, people gathering to watch cricket in front of a small TV in a quaint village. Of all the temples I had visited that day, in front of a 27 inch TV is where I found God.

By the time I reached there, Sachin had already crossed fifty and in the course of the innings became the first man to 17000 ODI runs. Quite monumental, but India still needed 250 more runs but there wasn’t much support for him at the other end. So he took the scoring into his own hands, I was barely six years old when he played the Sharjah Desert storm, so this was my own “desert storm”. His shot making was truly on display, cutting, driving on the up, slog and paddle sweep, he put out an exhibition.  His pull shot off Watson just rolled back the years. A lot of people had forgotten how attacking Sachin could be, and what better time to show than against the best side in the world while chasing a mammoth total.

The little crowd that now boasted of almost 50 people sensed India could win the game after all, our best batsman was still at the crease going all guns blazing. Getting 19 runs off the last 3 overs with 4 wickets in hand was a walk in the park. Clint McKay who might not have had an illustrious career, may never forget his international cricket debut where on the first ball of the 48^th over he took the wicket of Sachin Tendulkar, trying to paddle scoop a slower one as the ball ended up in the hands of Nathan Hauritz.

The distraught shop owner then switched off his TV and we had to simply walk away from there. In the next morning’s newspaper I was in disbelief when I read the result of the game. If you have followed Indian cricket for long enough, you’d know what followed a Sachin wicket, a collapse. Yes! The 90s were back. Sachin played one of his greatest innings and yet again a disastrous batting by the tail, who couldn’t manage 19 off 17 balls meant that India fell excruciatingly short by 3 runs. For me this innings was one of the best ever while chasing and the atmosphere I witnessed the game in, probably the best ever. And it is one of those games where I still think “yaar yeh match toh jeetna hi chahiye tha!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_NOSZs-T1s