Let's learn from Test cricket in time of coronavirus: Sachin Tendulkar

Cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar tells India to keep up the fight against Covid-19 and take it session by session, day by day like the game's most demanding format:

Cricket is a unique sport. Most sports compete against other sports for fans' attention, but cricket competes with ever evolving versions of itself. There has been much debate about the relevance of Test Cricket in the fast paced T20 world. While the world battles the Covid-19 pandemic, this is probably the time for all of us to draw lessons from the grand old format of the game.

Test Cricket rewards you for respecting what you don't understand. It makes you value the virtue of patience. When you don't understand the pitch conditions or the bowler, defence becomes the best form of attack. Patience is what we require now, if we have to defend well. In my entire life as a professional cricketer and beyond, I never thought I would see anything like this. Cricket in India and globally has come to a complete standstill.

 To use a cricketing metaphor, while individual brilliance can help a team in shorter formats of the game, in Test cricket it is all about partnerships and teamwork. If a batter faces the easy overs and keeps letting partners take on the menacing bowlers, then he or she may score runs and remain unbeaten, but the innings will collapse. This is a valuable lesson for us to learn from.