First was the possibility of pre-mature fatigue of the right arm and shoulder, leading to a fatal falsely-timed stroke caused by Tendulkar’s unusually heavy bat. Sudhir Vaidya, the eminent cricket statistician, has, in a note to me, put that bat’s weight at 3 pounds (lbs), 2 ounces (ozs) or 1.42 kilograms (1 lb = 16 ozs = 0.45359237 kilograms). However, ‘Baboo’ Nadkarni—a well-known supplier of cricket gear to the big names from Sunil Gavaskar downwards—contends that Tendulkar’s bat weighs 3 lbs (1.36 kgs) but concedes it could be the villain which denies Tendulkar the staying power at the crease required for a double century. According to him, a batsman tends to use a lighter bat with advancing age, and that, as far as he knows, only two extraordinarily endowed men—Clive Lloyd and Viv Richards—used bats as heavy or heavier than Tendulkar’s. Gavaskar’s 221 at The Oval Test in 1979 was made with a bat weighing 2 lbs 5 ozs. Lara, the Test and world record holder of the highest innings, wields a bat which is between 2 lbs, 4 ozs and 2 lbs, 5 ozs, while Azharuddin’s bat, says Nadkarni, "is like a cigarette" at 2 lbs, 2 ozs. But while advocating that Tendulkar should try out a lighter bat for Tests, Nadkarni feels that the bigger problem is that Tendulkar is "contented with what he’s got in life—all of it so early—but if he only makes up his mind, he will be able to get what he wants."