Ending in Credit

As someone who grew up as a cricket fan in the days when satellite television didn't exist and Rupert Murdoch was just a newspaper proprietor (well, I'm sure he wasn't just that really, but you know what I mean), I try not to take for granted the fact that it's now so easy to see so much cricket from all over the world.

Back in the old days it was just a crackly TMS transmission from Bombay or Melbourne or Christchurch or St.John's and a few grainy pictures on the evening news if you were lucky. And that was if England were playing. If they weren't you'd be searching for the scores in the Daily Telegraph and then waiting at least a month for some grainy snaps in Wisden Cricket Monthly or The Cricketer.

Now, of course, it's all different. On a drizzly Monday morning, as the coldest English winter for years stretches endlessly on, what better way to make the return to the daily grind bearable than by watching a partnership between two of the greatest batsmen of all time?

Tendulkar was often subdued, content to play second fiddle to Sehwag's usual hypnotic and unstoppable blend of power and subtlety, but he emerged from his shell whenever he felt like it, notably when he despatched Wayne Parnell with a dismissiveness that suggested he might have been pointing out that he'd been seeing off better bowlers than Parnell since Parnell himself was in nappies.

Not that Tendulkar is ever that arrogant. He just likes to bat, and a placid Eden Gardens track, with a lively crowd in, was the type of situation in which he likes to bat most.

By the close they were both gone, but India ended the day in credit.