From the sublime to the nervous

When India and Pakistan met at the Gaddafi Stadium in February 2006, the one-day series was beautifully poised at 1-1. Pakistan set India 289 to win, and Mohammad Asif soon began to move the ball this way and that almost at will. India lost two wickets in no time, and with even Rahul Dravid struggling to put bat to ball, it was left to Sachin Tendulkar to show everyone just how it should be done. His judgment was impeccable, and his shot selection faultless. While Dravid struggled to get a run every other ball, Tendulkar ticked on serenely, utterly changing the complexion of the match.

He departed for 95, perhaps worth twice as much as a hundred in placid conditions, but by then India needed just a run a ball to take a crucial lead in the series.  They strolled home with 16 balls to spare, as Yuvraj Singh and MS Dhoni snuffed out the Pakistani challenge.

The parallels were impossible to ignore today at Gwalior. This time, the target was a more modest one, 256, but the pitch too was more sluggish. Again, India lost two batsmen for single-digit scores, and again it was left to Tendulkar to make it look as though he were performing on an elevated plane to everyone else.

The back-foot punches through cover for four off Umar Gul were breath-stoppingly good, but it was the three successive fours off Shahid Afridi that best showcased his genius. The first was lofted over the infield, the second slapped through the inner ring and the third whiplashed with such ferocity that the man running around the boundary hadn't a prayer of stopping it.

Each shot had gone into the cover region, yet each was utterly different from the other. All that they had in common was the effect they had on the fielding side. Already slumped shoulders collapsed further, and the intensity that usually colours matches between these two great rivals was nowhere in evidence.

Yet again though, Tendulkar fell in sight of three figures. It was his sixth such failure this year, and if the 90s he now has in Tests (seven) and ODIs (16) had  been converted to centuries, his career tally would stand at 101 rather than 78.

In Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, it took Deep Thought 7 1/2 million years to compute the answer to the Ultimate Question. That answer was 42. Tendulkar has now been searching for ODI century No.42 since last January, and millions of fans - their nerves shredded with each failure in the 90s - will be hoping that he finds a solution rather more rapidly than Deep Thought did.

Pakistan need more than Deep Thought. They need to look for signs for life. Apart from Afridi and Shoaib Akhtar, the rest were as animated as zombies on the field. They might as well have been playing Milton Keynes XI for all the passion on view, and it'll need a dramatic turnaround to prevent the upcoming Test series following a similarly one-sided pattern.