5 things India will miss in the post-Sachin Tendulkar era

Sachin Tendulkar was the first to score a double century in ODIs.

This is a very difficult one to write, because there are not 5 but more than 5 million things that all of us Indians will miss about the great man. It is very difficult to pick 5 that absolutely stand out. Still, I have made an effort to list them thinking what I, at least, would miss now that he is no longer part of Indian cricket as a player, excluding the very obvious thing that the whole world will miss- runs flowing from his blade.

5. Records tumbling every time he played

Kapil Dev on Sachin – “You can’t contain Sachin’s deeds in a statistical frame. He brings unstinted joy to the art of batting. Statistics will happen because cricket is about runs and wickets. But how can you evaluate Sachin’s contributions by just counting the number of runs he has scored. To me, he best symbolises the heights an individual can rise to dominate a team sport. Words can never capture the beauty of Sachin’s cricket.”

Not that he ever cared for personal records, but it was pure fun for us as viewers to see old records tumbling and new records being made every time he batted, at least for the latter half of his career when he was scaling heights no one had reached before. It was fun to expect another ton every time he was batting, and it was a disappointment every time he missed one, especially when he got out in the nervous 90s. He also has a record for getting out most number of times in that score range, mind you.

He has such a high number of records to his name that nowadays we see articles titled ‘Five records Sachin does not hold’, now that he has retired. There will have to be another player of his stature if we have to experience the joy of such huge records being challenged and new records being created almost every time the player plays, or else this joy dies with his retirement. Many critics have constantly come up with bullshit about him playing for personal records, to which his own statement was an apt reply,

“When people throw stones at you, you turn them into milestones.”

4. Sachin the Gentleman

Andrew Symonds once addressed Sachin thus, “To Sachin, the man we all want to be”.

Sachin has always walked. Plain and simple. No second thoughts were given by him ever in this regard. If he edged the ball, he would start walking without even looking at the umpire. This is a quality very few people possess in today’s times, and the game has one gentleman less now that he has retired. Dravid and Gilchrist are two other names that come to mind when it comes to walking. Dravid, no doubt, is regarded as the greatest gentleman of the game. But Sachin is no less. You can expect him to behave in the best manner possible on a cricket field, and no wonder he is considered the best example of how a player of the game should be. He also faced harsh decisions quite a few times, especially when Steve Bucknor was officiating. But he never questioned his decisions.

In 24 years of international cricket, he sledged just once, and that too because it was a team strategy to try and upset Glenn McGrath’s rhythm in a Champion’s Trophy game in Kenya. The ruse worked well, and India won the match. Other times when bowlers tried and acted fresh with him, he let his bat do the talking, the latest example of which was seen in his last Test innings when Tino Best was bowling to him.

Apart from the above, he wasn’t involved in a single controversy in his long career as far as one can remember. Sachin and controversy almost seem like two opposite words. He was usually among the people who did the work of calming people down whenever temperatures rose in the middle of the cricket pitch, or otherwise. Even during the very sensitive monkeygate controversy, he was called upon to describe his version of the incident so that a clearer perspective of things could be got.

Cricket will forever miss this little gentleman.

3.  His bowling

The world’s best batsman has 46 Test and 154 ODI wickets to his name. Surely, that is an aspect of him that will be missed. His ‘googly’s which managed to confuse even the most well settled of batsmen proved to be a trump card for all those who have captained India when Sachin played. His simple action and run-up which ended with sometimes the most lethal of deliveries were something that all of us enjoyed watching. It was a different feeling whenever the Master Blaster got a wicket, unlike when other bowlers got wickets. It just felt right when somebody got out to him, and the celebration which followed was just pure happiness.

He has an economy of 5.1 in ODIs with two 5-wicket hauls, and an average of 44.48. These are pretty impressive stats considering that he was the best batsman of his time. He had that element in his bowling which sent the signal to the watchers that something was going to happen the very next delivery. If you have watched Sachin bowl I am sure you can relate, you almost expect something (most often a wicket) when he is given the ball. He was handed the ball most times because of his knack of breaking set partnerships, and he delivered more often than not. This trump card option as a fifth or sixth bowler in the side will be longed for, now that he is gone.