The new India: a fan's view

Greatness in sport is usually bestowed in retrospect. Record, longevity, context all come into it. Yet sometimes greatness is visible to the naked eye at the start of a career and the label at the end of it is merely the endorsement. Sachin Tendulkar was 16 when he made his debut; he was seen as the next big thing - a combination of India's two best batsmen, Sunil Gavaskar and Gundappa Viswanath, as Dilip Vengsarkar said to me then.

Nearly a quarter of a century later, deeds performed, potential lived up to, records broken, a nation's love earned, Tendulkar bade farewell. It was a miserable final series, but an emotional end for the champion, who finished on his home ground.

Taking that as the starting point, Soumya Bhattacharya attempts to capture the spirit of the transition, as India's golden era finally ended with the retirement of its oldest member and the man who gave the age his name. By November 2013, Rahul Dravid, Anil Kumble, Sourav Ganguly, VVS Laxman were all long gone.

For those who read meaning into such things, the first delivery following Tendulkar's final dismissal was driven to the fence by Virat Kohli. The old order had clearly given way to the new.

In his first book, You Must Like Cricket?, Bhattacharya, a special subset of the Indian cricket fan - one with intelligence and perspective, and therefore in a minority - took issue with the cliché that cricket is a religion in India. "Religion led to the Partition," he wrote, "it led to riots in Mumbai. It led to the pogrom against Muslims…" He rejects the comparison with Bollywood too, concluding: "Cricket is unlike anything else in India. It is its only analogy." In other words, cricket is like cricket and nothing else. It is the philosophy of the diehard fan.

And it is this fan who has written about the new India - the post-Sachin Tendulkar team - bringing to the task an elegant style and a wealth of statistical information and player profiles. And above all, a measured passion that first alights on an emotion and then finds post-hoc justification. This is the fan's way.

These qualities ensure that a book of recent history - no Indian fan is likely to discover something here he did not already know - is eminently readable.

The series post-2013, in New Zealand, South Africa, England, the Champions Trophy and the World T20 are all recorded in their well-known patterns. Bhattacharya brings the occasional touch of the novelist to some of the descriptions, but they are all too recent to bear such repetition. The profiles that are woven into the narrative are well-written too, but they tell us nothing new. As an exercise in recording a short phase of India's cricket, the book is a success, but it lacks the perspective of time and distance.

It is easy to assume that Tendulkar threw a disconcerting shadow over the new stars. Yet only 12 years after his debut did India win a Test outside the subcontinent. And that was against Zimbabwe. The following year, India won in Port-of-Spain. The Kohlis and Pujaras and Rahanes tasted success much earlier in their careers; the Tendulkar legacy is a positive one.

Transition is one of the toughest things to manage in team sport, says Bhattacharya. India seem to have managed it better than most. Better than Australia, who hit a low ebb and then rebuilt under Allan Border. Better than West Indies, who hit rock bottom. In recent years India have been tigers at home and lambs abroad - this was one of the early clichés about Indian cricket. The batting stars seem to be in place. But that's only half the battle. Where are the bowlers to replace the Kumbles, Harbhajans, Srinaths and Zaheer Khans?

Perhaps they are already present. They just need time.

After Tendulkar: The New Stars of Indian Cricket
By Soumya Bhattacharya
Aleph Book Company, 240 pages
Rs 495