Yes, the curtain is about to be drawn up on perhaps the most illustrious sporting (not only cricket) career we’ve seen in the last few decades. No, make it a century. For a man who scored a century of centuries in international cricket, the benchmark also has to be a century.[break]
We knew his eventual retirement was coming. An age-old adage has it: ‘Every good thing has to end’. It was just a matter of time. He’s 40 and not getting any younger. He’s not the same athlete he was once upon a time. He already owns virtually all the records a batsman can think of in cricket. He must be finding it difficult to motivate himself to go and play again.
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Yet that logic is difficult to satisfy a fan, for a fan is a mean animal. He (or she) hardly cares about what his (or her) favorite athlete goes through while playing. For every ooh! or applause drawn from you, your favorite player has to struggle. And while pleasing you, he (or she) rarely grimaces or expresses pain. It’s not mere statistics that sets apart the great from those who are good.
He’s been playing for the last 24 years. Well, almost. There have been some players who made international debuts, retired, became coaches and retired from that too. The only difference, they made debuts after Sachin and retired from coaching. Sachin was yet to hang up his boots. So is it longevity that makes him great? Maybe, but that’s only one side of the story.
A fan in yours truly protests while learning about retirement of this 5-foot, 5-inch great. Fans like yours truly hate the phrase ‘Every good thing has to end.’ Retirement means you’re no longer going to see the person in action. It’s the end: An end to statistics, kaput to speculations, final end to anticipation, goodbye to betting, and farewell to the joys that the man brought along. You want more. Fans beg for one more hurrahs, one more match, one more inning, another century, or maybe a fifty.
Watching cricket is different from watching other sports. In other sports, your total attention is on the action. A cricket aficionado likes to absorb the atmosphere of the oval ground that it’s played on: The culture of the city, your fellow cricket watchers, the drink-and-snack sellers, and the architecture of the stands, the weather, and the posters. They all form a part of the cricket viewing experience.
One of the best posters (or a banner) I’ve ever seen on a cricket ground read: “Commit all your crimes when Sachin is batting. They will go unnoticed because even the Lord is watching.”
Now that tells you about the colossal feats of this diminutive individual. Perhaps the biggest tribute any player, across sports, can ever imagine to get. He was called God, in a country that’s secular but accepts cricket as a religion. A fitting compliment? Maybe not enough. For Sachin Tendulkar was not a mere cricketer.
As you watched him for the first time in an International match, he was all but 16. A teenager smitten by the charms of cricket while growing up in Mumbai, the Mecca of Indian cricket. To be playing in an international match against Pakistan at that age, he had to be special. And then, in his first outing, you saw him getting hit on his face by a Waqar Younis scorcher. You thought the kid was finished, his career over, an obituary needed to be written. And then you saw, he stood up, refused medical help, wanted to play. You could feel there was something bigger than just ‘special.’ Script of a greater story was being written. Sachin Tendulkar was not just an entertainer. He was to become God of Cricket. Obituary could wait. That was 1989.
Tendulkar grew in stature in the 1990s. So did India, economically and politically, thanks to IT revolution. And in Nepal, you wondered if we were growing. The generation that grew up watching Tendulkar was struggling on this side of the border. That was the time when unrest grew across the country, discontent within communities broadened. We had missed the economic bus to freedom. But you took solace in watching Sachin Tendulkar play.
A man, born in middle class, with middle-class values, was pleasing millions, from Karachi to Kathmandu to Kolkata. His bank account was also growing by the millions. While you read newspapers to check for the scams induced by the political class, you checked his score too, just to make sure the world still belonged to those who worked hard. If he had scored well, the world was still sane. While you struggled for your bread, butter and status, you felt being represented at the world stage. He was taking on the world for you. And while doing that, he would neither boast nor cringe. He would do that matter-of-factly. No fist pumping, no high fives. If you started watching cricket after the turn of century, you would think, “Does this guy even have emotions?” But after every century, or every landmark he crossed, he would look up at the sky, thanking the powers that be. And solemnly carry on. Oriental philosophies always taught you against being boastful.
While watching him, you knew that 50 Test hundreds were mere a formality. And so was a tally of hundred international hundreds. You knew this man did not endure in the pursuit of milestones.
This is 2013. A lot has changed over the years. We’ve seen him at his pomp, saw him struggling. As his fans, it was difficult to face the question, “When will he retire?” For you knew, he had to. Whenever this question was asked, climate change was an easier topic to discuss. He continued playing so long, not because there was another milestone awaiting him but because he could not fall out of love with cricket.
Now, the God has chosen retirement. He chose Mumbai for his last match, not because he had more fans in that city but because he wanted his mother to watch him play. She never had watched him play at the stadium. Simple desires of a man who has the world at his feet, yet he managed to remain simple.
He was termed God, for maintaining simplicity in a glamorous world. For fans (or devotees) too, it is simple, God doesn’t retire. We’ll bask in the glory of having watched him play live.
The writer is the associate editor at Republica.
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