So the first one-day win for India this year and first comprehensive win of the entire season against worthy opponents in a match that mattered. Since the start in last July, there has been a dearth of those.
After a long time it appears like Tendulkar did deserve the man of the match. There is no doubt that Sehwag played the best knock in that match. But in subcontinent, typically one or two centuries in a high scoring game are very common. What's not common is a team failing to chase an under-300 score with the pitch seemingly batsmen friendly. The Pak middle order has been very tough to crack recently for India and many times in the recent past, it's the middle order which has pulled Pak out of early losses. From a healthy looking 112/4 with Inzy well set and guys like Afridi yet to come, it would otherwise be an easy match for Pak, mainly because India's spare bowlers haven't had much impact on them recently. To bundle them out for another 80 runs or so from there was incredible.
The man of the match awards in one-days have traditionally been given to batsmen. At least there the bowlers should get some preference. I wonder what motivation the bowlers have to play one-days with all rules going against them. I remember the early days of one-day games where it seemed these awards were given just to the highest scorer. On India pitches it should have always been the highest wicket taker. One such cruel occurence was in 1998 when on a placid Colombo pitch India scored 307 and Sri Lanka were in the hunt for most of the time before finally losing it. Tendulkar, Ganguly both had scored centuries and Aravinda De Silva scored another good one in that gallant chase. Right from their World Cup win in 1996 they were unbeatable at home and were in the final of their independence cup. Agarkar took four of their crucial wickets-Jayasuriya, Kalu, Ranatunga and finally De Silva. Every time they looked like they were going well, Agarkar came and broke it. That last one of De Silva triggered a collapse and they lost the final- that was the first time Sri Lanka had lost a major one-day game at home since '96. For anybody watching that game, Agarkar was the man. But it was given to Tendulkar. There is no doubt he played well, but so had Ganguly and Aravinda and all this was on a track hardly assisting pace bowling. But that's how it has been, this time Tendulkar happened to be on the receiving end.
But he has given interesting signals by going for his shots right from the start. I would still prefer Tendulkar playing naturally and getting out like that rather than having him play against his instinct and fall to those meek LBWs while trying to turn everything to leg side. When he plays like he started in the first game, I feel a big one-probably a big hundred- is just around the corner.
Here is the cricinfo link to the series home.
And here is the scorecard of that 1998 game I have written about.