Sachin Tendulkar is not a superhero

Sachin Tendulkar

It is 16th November 2013 and without a speck of doubt on my mind, this is the single most memorable day of my life yet. It has been an emotional see-saw, but the last 24 hours have taught me much more about life, humanity, relationships, success and theism etc. than any other experience of mine. This was the day the great Sachin Tendulkar hung up his boots and this nation has just seen the last of its greatest citizen on a cricket field.

I have been wanting to dedicate an article to this superlative athlete for quite some time now, but can you blame me for this procrastination. I am just human, filled with all of its defining sluggishness and indisipline unlike the subject of my article. It is common among sports fans to elevate their heroes to teh status of superheroes and even idolize them as demi-gods and I was no exception to this rule.

The task of assigning a superhero name to SRT was quite time consuming but after much contemplation I realized that Sachin was never a superhero but much more meaningful and existential than that. I have made a sincere effort to take you all through various stages of my life and elaborate how every stage was shaped by Sachin’s rise as a cricketer and hopefully by the end of this article, I will be able to depict a true picture of what SRT means to me.

The genesis of gaiety

The very first time I had any tangible cognizance of SRT was in the sports section at the back of of ‘The Hindu’ newspaper which covered an article on his maiden century against England. The admiration for the player grew in leaps and bounds and it was because of him that even today I am accustomed to first turning to the last page of any newspaper or magazine, even The Economist. I remember getting up at 3 am to catch a glimpse of Sachin at his very first World Cup in Australia and NZ and though at this point in time, not too much was expected of this genius he still shone against our arch-rivals and that one half century brought a lot of joy.

The expectations and as a result disappointment at times was humongous and once during this world cup game against the West Indies we were beaten so badly and Sachin failed to inspire even a fight. I ended up feeling severely ill and this taught me a valuable lesson about the mind’s dominance and influence over the body. More than a year later an enviable opportunity presented itself as the England team traveled to India and I went with my family to the Chepauk Stadium in Chennai and watched this much-hyped player smash away boundaries with great precision and finesse. This century made me and the entire Chennai crowd fall madly in love with him ever since.

Paper covers rock, His numbers trump gayatri manta

As a Tamil brahmin (TamBram being the more hip term) the thread ceremony is an important milestone and this happened to me in 1996, and although I was quite dedicated at performing all the rituals all my focus and cerebral powers were diverted towards one thing. This was the 1996 World Cup and SRT was touted to be the greatest attraction and rightly so game after game he notched up scores like 127, 70, 90, 137, 3, 31 and 65. Believe me when I say this that the run of scores was jumping out of my memory without the help of any wikipedia or cricinfo website.

I watched and revered this superstar and it just made my life much more joyous knowing that I could just get over any of my academic tensions and stresses by watching one straight drive off the centre of his willow. I was a teenager bereft of any peer pressure to date girls or smoke the odd cigarette butt. I am not intending to take any credit away from my mother’s flawless parenting techniques, but SRT mania was my only source of mass distraction and thus this adoration and hero-worship for SRT kept me away from vice.

Runs and Ruins

1998 was a year which catapulted SRT to another orbit of athletic stardom, as anybody who grew up during those years would remember this famous series of shows called “Sachin at 25″. This was a year where records kept tumbling as SRT amassed an incredible 1894 ODI runs and scored 9 hundreds. Sharjah was where this hungry wolf hunted and he devoured the famous Aussies as well as the meek Zimbabweans. Unlike the nature and style of wolves, Sachin was on the prowl without a pack to support him. His innings against Australia in April 1998 where he battled a fearsome Aussie attack and an Act of God ( the sandstorm) to take India into the finals was the greatest 3 hours of sporting revelry for me as a fan.

This was immediately followed by another blistering rendition two days later and Sachin helped India beat Australia. For obvious reasons I was glued to the TV and this meant that lesser time was allocated to preparation for my Engineering entrance exams which was on the next day. To this very day my Dad believes that my career would have headed into a higher plane if I had stayed away from viewing that match.

Later that year Zimbabwe was at the receiving end of this willow-wielding maestro and especially one fast bowler who was humbled by the sheer prowess of SRT’s stroke-making. Like I always tell my sister, in a lighter vein of-course, Sachin is diabolical for he has ruined many careers like mine and other professional bowlers.

Cricket at the top of the pecking order

Something bewildering happened in 1999 when I entered into a graduate program in Electrical Engineering ( this was not the bewildering part) and India began its participation at the World Cup in England. After a loss at the opening fixture against South Africa, a remorseful news broke out that SRT’s dad had passed away back in Mumbai and Sachin had to fly back home and this was doubly disheartening for fans like me who not only grieved at his loss but also were nervously wondering if he could ever make it back to play for India soon.

Surprisingly enough, after just missing one game against Zimbabwe, the master returned to English soil to play against Kenya. Pretty soon he eased into the game and batted like everything around him was approaching a state of normalcy. He scored a brilliant century and led India to its first victory as I could not stop bowing and saying hallelujah to this cricketing God. I vividly remember his interview after the game because he was sporting a pair of shades and he said that his mom had wanted Sachin to get back to playing for his country rather than sitting at home grieving.

If one thought that SRT was a Godsend, once cannot garner words to describe the unselfish attitude of his mother. Tears rolled down my cheeks and Sachin just climbed a further 1000 levels towards Godliness. Roundabout the time, I prayed that I would fast until India made it to the next stage of the competition thinking that my prayers would get the objective met. It was only later that I realized that what the team actually missed was a demi-god in the form of SRT.

Sachin Tendulkar

Reverend of Raleigh

Staying away from family is a herculean task, especially for a mamma’s boy like me and especially if we lived on different time zones. During my higher education in Raleigh, USA the world cup moved to the Rainbow Nation in 2003 and a few Indian students pooled in some money and got a special internet TV deal to watch India’s matches. After a horrendous start against Australia, Indian fans started burning down effigies of their heroes and SRT had to come out and publicly beseech for patience and support from fans. From that moment on India came out a transformed side and Sachin led from the front and I recall this innings against Pakistan where he scored a blitzkrieg 98 off just 75 balls. There were a few occasions when I got up and just bowed in amazement of the genius’ shots even forgetting that there were strangers sitting next to me. The joy he brought to our lives helped overcome a tough two year period and not many athletes can have such an impact on their fans

Flaws with possible cause

Like most of God’s creations, SRT too had a few rough patches and flaws and these drew a lot of criticism. As a cricketer with colossal potential it was only a matter of time before the responsibility of captaincy was handed over to him. Expectations were sky high but the passage of every tour and series only furthered the sense of heartache and dis-consolation. There have been many theories exploring the reason behind the failure of SRT as a captain varying from absence of leadership skills to mischance.

I would definitely rubbish the former and probably settle for something down the middle. It is true that he was being let down by a string of poor performances by quality players in his team, however I believe he set the bar unreasonably high for all his players and where he faltered was the fact that a true captain knows the shortcomings of his team aptly. If he had understood the simple mantra that a team’s ability was always collectively stronger than the sum of the abilities of all its players, he would have gone on to achieving supremacy even in that department without trying to extract too much out of his less proficient team-mates.

The other complaint, if you will, I had against the genius was that he was never quite successful when batting with the tail-enders. Any arguments that hinted at Sachin’s lack of determination or gusto, would deserve nothing short of the kitchen-sink treatment from me. I would have loved to see the master disprove such skeptics, but once again it all boiled down to SRT’s obsession with the macro scheme of things.

He probably burdened himself with all the exorbitant pressure to salvage the team out of jail single-handed, while he could have simply followed another Aussie leader who always gave more of the strike to the tail-enders under such a predicament. Sachin got overprotective and this distracted him from the basics of batting more than anything else.

Numbers, not what one remembers!!

Numbers dont lie, and although that adage is veracious, statistics form part of an infamous trifecta inclusive of lies and damned lies. So in plain English, I believe one has to analyse SRT by some means beyond just facts, figures and records. I here attempt to embellish this article by digging deeper into some of the most inimitable characteristics of the legend’s batting and proffer some proof to back it up.

Ain’t no mountain high enough: SRT never doubted his abilities and always aimed for the stars. During this group stage match in April 1998, Sachin took the fight to the Aussies and made sure through his nonpareil display that India qualified for the finals even if they lost the match eventually. However his aggression suggested that he was not settling for that option and even when he got out, his brief talk to the incoming batsman revolved around a simple idea i.e. play to win.

Poker face: There is no human being devoid of emotions, yet like a great writer once said “Courage is the mastery of Fear, not the absence of it”, SRT was a master of this trait and whether it was a tense nail-biter or a walk in the park, it just could not be made out by a facial recognition software. Many of you might remember this story of an Australian bowler who complained that Sachin kept grinning at him as he ran into bowl. The truth is that Sachin maintained that sameexpression before every ball he faced. There have been numerous occasions where he would get hit by a bouncer, but nobody has ever witnessed a grimace or even a shake of the hand and this disintegrated the bowlers calmness and strategy.

Excellence in Escalation: In one of the movies themed in Gotham city, the Commissioner says that when the dark knight uses semi-automatic weapons, the mob used automatic weapons and so on, in other words escalation. SRT has faced many challenges in his professional stint. A famous Aussie leggie, nicknamed “Hollywood” , spinned and tricked all Indian batsmen like a spiders web on a turning track in Chennai in 1998. However when the Little Master faced the spin wizard who was making the ball turn form outside the leg stump, it only took the former a few overs to get accustomed. In a test match where India would have quite gladly taken a draw, SRT muscled and outsmarted the leggie’s every move and notched up a terrific century and put India in a commanding position to later win the match. In another unforgettable test in Sydney Sachin reached an unbeaten score of 241 without scoring a single boundary through his favorite off-side as the Aussies kept getting him out on the previous instances by enticing him to play a cover drive. He was ready to face any challenge and more often than not he came out on top.

Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar has achieved everything in the game of cricket and the records speak for themselves. I have been a staunch fan of this ravager but for sometime now it has been my opinion that he should have called it day a while ago. I have faced severe criticism from my own friends and family and was even called a turncoat, but the I place SRT on such a high pedestal and hence could not digest the drop in his performance down to the level of lesser mortals.

When India lost eight consecutive away test matches to England and Australia, Sachin should have taken responsibility to these losses, as he made no meaningful contribution to the side , and retired from Test cricket. It is a completely different argument that he was still way better than most of the other players in the squad, but I believe he should have taken a leaf out of this Aussie wicket keeper’s book who recently announced his retirement and claimed he decided it was the right time to quit after he dropped just a regulation catch behind the stumps.

However in Sachin’s defense, playing cricket is the only thing on his mind and he always wanted to continue serving the nation with a willow in his hand. It was nobody’s place to ask him to give up that right he so deservedly earned at the age of 16 when at that tender age mere mortals like me were focusing all the energy and time on the cutest girls in class.

With the grace of God I somehow got myself tickets to SRT’s 200th game and it was an exhilarating experience even for me, having watched so many of his games from inside the stadium. To watch the master walk down on the 3rd day morning was heavenly and I just shouted ” Thalaiva Va da” which means “Come on, you Leader”. The last time we saw him on the field was too overwhelming for me and I picked up the phone on the morning of 16th November and spoke to my mom.

It was more of crying than speaking of course and I was inconsolable to say the least as the feeling of losing this Big Brother of mine away from cricket was just hitting me on so many levels. SRT probably occupied 80% of my adolescent lif’e’s thoughts, prayers, dreams etc. My mom waited for me to calm down and just said ” You should just learn one thing from Him… Keep aiming for excellence and always keep your personal life clean and honest no matter what”. She was right as usual, and I have to take my hats off to this prodigy who lived an immaculate life on and off the field. Even his farewell speech was bordering perfection and to see him openly disclose his flaws as a husband in front of an entire nation made me realize my endless list of flaws.

The PM has done justice to the Bharat Ratna by awarding it to this pioneer of sporting excellence and as I conclude this article I realise that SRT is not God, He is not a Super Hero. He is the greatest living proof that God exists and probably that when the almighty puts his mind into something and sheds his laziness, he can create something so precious like Sachin Tendulkar.

It is my humble request to all Indians to keep him away from any comparisons to other Indian sportsmen and movie celebrities (especially a tall, old actor sporting a french beard). Popularity, ability, achievements or human nature, SRT is one of a kind. I would like to break away from the shackles that tie diplomatic analysts and sportsmen and say that Sachin is the greatest Cricketer in the world ever unless God wakes up from his slumber and re-creates that magic he employed 40 years ago.