Pravin Tambe - The 40-year-old youngster!

Pravin Tambe – Inspiration personified

His stint at the IPL though, didn’t work out the way he would have liked. He got limited opportunities and on batting friendly wickets, couldn’t manage to grab the eyeballs. Then came the Spot-fixing saga. Rajasthan Royals made the headlines for all the wrong reason and Tambe’s debut got pushed to the background.

But as they say, success comes to them who waits and Tambe had been waiting for his share for more than 20 years now. The Champions League T20 came beckoning and the match against Highveld Lions put Pravin Tambe in his rightful place on the cricket map.

Chasing a competitive 180 plus score put up by the Royals, the Lions captain Alviro Petersen and Hardus Viljoen put the 50-runs partnership. Just as when the match seemed tilting towards the Lions, Rahul Dravid introduced his secret weapon, Pravin Tambe.

The first over saw Viljoen fall victim to a flipper. The 2nd over changed the complexion of the game. Tambe accounted for Jean Symes and Sohail Tanvir and derailed the Lions’ chase. The third over saw a perfect leg-spinner disturb Petersen’s furniture and Tambe ended the game with figures of 4 for 15 and grabbed the Man of the Match award.

Tambe continued his mastery in the next game and the Perth Scorchers had no answer to the old man’s bag of tricks.

Rajasthan Royals have made their way into the semifinals of the Champions League T20 and Tambe has already shown that he will be Dravid’s main weapon in the knock out stages.

Will these performances open a few more doors for Tambe? Will he get to play his first first-class game? Will the national selectors be tempted?

May be he will, maybe he won’t, but it doesn’t even matter. It doesn’t matter whether Tambe finally makes his debut for Mumbai or goes on to play for India. It doesn’t matter even if he never dons the Indian jersey, because all Tambe wanted was to live his dream of playing cricket.

If Rajasthan goes on to win the Champions League, Tambe would have achieved his dream and even if they don’t, Tambe would still be standing with his head held high because at 41, Tambe is busy weaving his own tale that will not only encourage the thousands of not-so-good cricketers who vanish into the oblivion of Indian cricket, but his story might even inspire the famed 40-year-old superstar to mount one last salvo.

In a country that boasts of Piyush Chawla as their best hope as a wrist spinner, Tambe is a surely a realistic option, but then again, that’s a story for another day because to the Tambes of the world, playing cricket is more important than the colour of the shirt they wear.

“I enjoy playing cricket and that’s what I am doing now. If I had such ambitions, I would have been frustrated long back and would have quit. I never expected to be playing in the IPL, but I am doing it now. If I am destined to play First Class cricket, I will.” – Pravin Tambe