The beauty of Sachin Tendulkar - one last time

Sachin Tendulkar will be missed

I feel strange. In a few days time, Sachin Tendulkar will walk out to play his last test match, and this article could be the last I’ll ever write about the man. I won’t be able to write once he’s actually done because I doubt words will be able to express what I feel. That may sound melodramatic, but good art usually gains such response.

Few of us know what a universe without Tendulkar at number four is. He indeed was an artist who could extract emotions from just connecting a bat with a ball. Cricket was about winning and losing, he turned it into something about passion, anger, frustration, love, all the emotions you can think of. Cricket became a living, breathing entity because Tendulkar used to walk out and take guard. No other man in the history of the sport can claim that honour, or burden, however you wish to think of it.

Of course, Tendulkar is well past his prime. If we’re all honest with ourselves, we know that the real Tendulkar all but disappeared after he was dismissed in Mumbai during the World Cup final. He’s struggled and scrambled and managed to notch up a few runs to elongate his stay in the team. But there were glimpses of his brilliance.

During the horrid tours of Australia and England, Tendulkar drove confidently and timed the ball to perfection from time to time, only for a lapse in concentration and just plain old age to ruin his starts. Yet, a lot of us see no blemish in his highly inconsistent form. “Tendulkar deserves a chance”, we say. “He’s done so much”, we say. We hang on to the past to try and pull it into the present. “He’s a god”, we say.

The beauty of Tendulkar is that he isn’t god. No man can claim to be one, no man should claim to be one, and nobody ever should claim anyone else is. Tendulkar was not a god, and in that lies the brilliance of the entire concept of one Sachin Tendulkar. He was you and he was me, and he was everyone else. Tendulkar is a homely and humble man who has worked his way to the top with blood, sweat and tears. He is no different from any of us, but he gives us hope that we can all be something greater. Not a god. It is an unfortunate moniker which the man carries around his neck. But he gave hope that you could be you.

There’s a lot of unfortunate business surrounding this entire final series, though. The fact that it was unnecessarily shoved into the FTP. That lavish gifts and other such things will pour down onto his head. That tickets will have his face stuck on to them. The world seems hellbent to prove the one thing Tendulkar has been talking against all his life – he is not bigger than the game.

There are athletes who come along once in a while and change the way people look at their respective sports. These athletes are remembered long after their passing, but the sport lives on, waiting for another to take a hold of it and enthrall the world once again. Tendulkar is not bigger than the sport. However, the fact that there is so much hype and hoopla surrounding the two tests suggests otherwise. But one cannot control the whims of the people. If they wish for 199-kgs of roses to topple over his head, then so be it.

But just a few days earlier, I met a college student who said he wanted to be like Sachin Tendulkar when he was older. I asked if he played cricket, and he said no. He wants to be a Chartered Accountant.

No, Sachin Tendulkar is not bigger than the sport, and he should not be treated like he is. But he is a separate entity. We don’t identify Tendulkar with cricket anymore, but with a way of life, an entire philosophy even. That’s the beauty of Sachin Tendulkar.

I often walk around Bombay because there’s little else to do. If you look close enough, once past the flashy lights and manicured exteriors, you witness a city filled with depression and disease. Men loiter around with nothing better to do apart from smoke and stare intently into air-conditioned stores with no apparent purpose.

You see men and women struggle with their lives on a daily basis, scavenging either open-interviews or the nearest garbage dump to feed their wailing children. You see people walking around aimlessly, inundated by all that’s around them but frustrated at how little they have.

To see a smile in the city of Bombay takes something enormous. And each and every smile is worth far more than anything we can fathom. In this city, it’s not a rarity to find that the cause for a smile is a sublime Tendulkar knock. You don’t need to understand technique to feel what Tendulkar is doing.

When he walks out out in Mumbai, it isn’t a sporting event that is taking place, it’s a kind of maturing for the average Indian. We’re letting go of this enigma, and now we stand on our feet alone. Play ball.