Sometime, in the week of November 14th 2013, I
will lose my job. When the little man with a giant shadow takes a final bow in
whites for the last time and trudges back to the pavilion to a rapturous
applause and a standing ovation, one of my vocations as a Sachin Tendulkar fan
will come to an end. When
I started my blog in 2004, this was what I had put in the About Me section
"... and will probably stop watching cricket when Tendulkar retires."
In 2004, I never felt I would have had to make that choice:(. Tendulkar was always timeless. The man
was God, not mortal. He would never retire, the straight drives would keep
flowing, and I would keep practicing my religion of cricket. But that is not
the case anymore. His heart has told him it is time to go. Tendulkar is
retiring and now we are left with a religion without a God.
Reams have been written about Tendulkar’s
effect on India, his effect on the game, his standing among the greats. But the
real question to ask is: what has Tendulkar’s career meant to you? Was it a nagging
constant as a cricket widow, consigned to watching your husbands and son stuck
to the television as they wondered how he does it again and again or were you
inexorably drawn to watch him cream a cover drive? Were you as a student always
seeking to figure out ways in which to bypass the authoritarian pressures of
attendance and education so that you could watch him murder the Aussie attack
on a sunny Chepauk afternoon? Were you glued to a computer monitor in a faraway
land praying for the pirated sports feed to stay honest while he batted,
knowing fully well that he has been known to crash servers which never could
handle the scale of his fans? Are you a father who gave his son his first bat
and told him two things: this is a great game and Tendulkar is the best batsman
of all time?
From 1989 to 2013, the lives of a billion
Indians have been punctuated with this man’s presence. For Tendulkar fans,
events in life correspond with another one of Sachin’s innings. If that isn’t
consistency, I don’t know what is. You can strike up a conversation with
someone else on one of Sachin’s great knocks and know fully well that the other
person will recall exactly where they were and what they were doing at that
time. Tendulkar’s dotted career is replete with lines that folks use to connect
to one another. It, as I stated before, is all about what it meant to you. So
deep was I steeped in his career that at a Mastermind event, I chose ‘Test
centuries of Sachin Tendulkar’ as a topic. There are so many incidents that I
can recall where a Tendulkar knock added subtext to a life event for me.
Like the time when we played Sri Lanka in
the semi-final of the 1996 World Cup. It was the day that the results of our
first semester of engineering were announced. Rumor was that the mark sheet was
going to be put up in the college sometime in the evening. I got the call when
the second innings had started. The prospect of seeing my marks was exciting
and nervous, but nothing would drag me away from the screen till Tendulkar was
there. He got out and I got out of the house. The disappointment of the low
scores I got was nothing compared to the fact that the man and the nation were
denied.
What about the other heartbreak of 1999? I
was giving my NCST (National center for software technology) entrance exams the
day Tendulkar was setting Chepauk alive with a near impossible single-handed
chase against the Pakistanis. His back was hurting, he had no support from the
other side, but he kept going on like the last action hero. His 136 was worth
its weight in gold, but the rest of them could not get the remaining 17 runs. I
remember calling home after every paper (there were six of them) to find out
what the score was. A bunch of were walking down to the railway station with a
radio between us having its volume turned to maximum. The funereal atmosphere
was penetrated with the news of the tailenders giving up one by one.
Or the time I was busy watching him do one
more chase at Chepauk. This was a fourth innings chase of a target set by the
England team. Sehwag had laid the foundation the previous day and Tendulkar was
crafting a masterful chase of the remainder. He was on 53 not out when I was
put into another situation where I had to abandon my chase of the chase. Our
first baby decided that it was time to come out and see the match as well and
it involved a sudden rush to the hospital. Among my first questions after the
madness of close to thirty-six hours had settled: how much did Sachin score?
I am sure most people have similar stories
to tell. How you abandoned another pursuit, stopped your life for a few
moments, met with friends to make it a communal experience, deserted sleep to wake
up and watch a game in a different time zone – all because Tendulkar had taken guard.
In the age of disunity and disharmony, our lives synchronized for a little
while.
It was not just his innings, but a little moment
in time of a knock that would stay with you. I often dream of a shot he played
against Michael Kasprowicz in the Desert Storm innings. The ball was pitched on
a good length between middle and off. It swung slightly in the air and was
shaping to move away. He was in position in an instant and you could see him
have enough time to adjust his shot, bring his bat down, and in a perfect arc,
hit it straight down the ground. It was perfection and it stayed with you. How
often have you watched the videos of his upper cut against Shoaib or his bullet
drives in Australia against Lee? How many such moments of genius have you
accumulated in your mind?
As the dust settles down and we reconcile
ourselves to a new reality where there will be a different number four playing
for India in whites, the presence (or absence) of Tendulkar would be
understood. The batting records are beyond challenge, but to measure him on
account of his batting records is like looking at the maximum speed a Ferrari
can reach. The whole is more than the sum of the parts. The whole in this case,
is a true gentleman who has shown the way for how genius combines with hard
work, ego can be subjugated in pursuit of excellence, a man dedicated to his
art sometimes surpasses it.
Cricket is my religion and Sachin is my God. Atheism awaits
me now.
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