Is it time for Tendulkar to hang up his boots?

Well, we have dwelled on this topic many a time in the recent past with no real objective or concluding answer. Quite often it has tended to become a subject of national importance. In fact more significant than inflation, corruption and poverty. My feeling is that it happened primarily due to the doom and gloom in the 90s for India as a nation, when our country was facing the wrath and bloodshed of the 1993 Mumbai blast, when communal harmony was at its lowest courtesy the Babri Masjid riot, when the whole advent of globalisation and the FDI was still at its embryonic stage. It was then that this child prodigy from the streets of Shivaji Park sparked hope inside us. He was the thin straw which we were clutching onto. We tended to forget our miseries and sorrows when he came onto the 22-yard battlefield. For many of us, he was the real Indian which we all aspired to idolise.

So should he hang up his boots after all ?

Most of us would agree that he is at the fag end of his glittering career and is past his pinnacle. He has achieved everything he set out to as a young boy. I reckon he was at the cusp of greatness between 1994-99 when he instilled fear into oppositions (although he has scored many more runs afterwards statistically).

So what is exactly stopping him from waving his final goodbye to his beloved sport. I guess one of the reasons is that all he did throughout his life is play cricket. He has toiled, and given his sweat and blood for 24 years. So it is rather challenging to quit a sport which has become your life, something you can’t differentiate from the other. Secondly, he still believes that he has some juice left in him to succeed at the top level. Third is the greed factor. Not in terms of money, but always the thought of wanting more. It doesn’t matter how successful you are. You always crave for more. Last but not the least, nobody would disagree with me when I say that that India is obsessed with statistics. Tendulkar is no different. He is trying to carve out his stupendous career around the mountains of statistics which would later be impossible to surpass.

My personal theory is that he should have retired right after India clinched the 2011 World Cup. There is nothing better than going out on a high. Sunil Gavaskar and Imran Khan are classic examples. But somewhere in the corner of my heart, I don’t ever want the great man to retire. I dread to see the light of the day when there’s no Sachin in the score-sheet. I grew up in the 90s when Tendulkar was at his very best. In a way, our lives ran parallel to each other. If and when the time arrives when he makes his swansong, a part of me will die.