Little master Sachin Tendulkar falters just as the apprentice steps into spotlight

It was a delivery that would have done for the best of them. The ball left Monty Panesar’s hand whirring like a buzz-saw, the seam ripping through the Mumbai air, before biting the dusty surface of the Mumbai wicket. It was far too good for the batsman.

It pitched around leg and broke hard, clattering into the off-stump. And that, as they say, was that. Sachin Tendulkar, the little master, trudged crestfallen back to the hutch, for a score of eight runs.

There was nothing shameful or unusual in getting out to Monty this morning. Monty was smoking; the pitch at Mumbai is designed to help spinners; England have belatedly realised that India is no place for three seamers; this is going to be a relatively low-scoring match.

Nevertheless, there was a time at which, even in a match like this, the sight of Tendulkar walking out would have put the willies up the fielding side. Not any more. As the great man approaches his 40th birthday, it is increasingly obvious that his decline has finally set in.

Tendulkar’s Test scores this year are not encouraging. Since making 41 and 80 in India’s innings defeat to Australia at Sydney in January, he has struggled for anything remotely approaching form: 15 and eight at Perth, 25 and 13 in Adelaide, 19 against New Zealand in an Indian innings victory at Hyderabad in August, 17 and 27 against the same opposition in Bangalore.

And now England. While Virender Sehwag and Cheteshwar Pujara flayed the English seamers around Ahmedabad, Tendulkar (above) weighed in with a paltry 13. Today, it was much the same story. Pujara, batting third, scored another divine hundred; Tendulkar was a footnote to the Indian first innings.