Sachin Tendulkar: the little man who hit the big fellow for six

Next ball, another boundary. I’m speechless. I think this is it. But no, the best was still to come. It came off Tom Moody. In Tony Greig’s incomparable words: “Oh, he has hit this one miles, great shot…oh it’s a biggie! Straight out of the top! The little man has hit the big fella for six! He’s half his size! And he’s smashed him down the ground! What a player! What a wonderful player!” I was getting delirious. My dad, who even then was clutching to his pessimism born out of years of heart-break, finally broke into a smile. He finally believed it was possible.

Stunning. Just when I was getting comfortable knowing that I had seen the best things that I could possibly see, Sachin, yet again, proved me wrong. Tony Greig sounded as if he was drunk. “Oh, that’s high! What a six! What a six! Way down the ground, it’s on the roof! It’s bouncing around on the roof!” It was Kasprowicz’s turn this time.

Such was this man. Every time I thought I’d seen the best thing in my life that I could ever see in cricket, he showed me something new, something even more brilliant, something even more beautiful. He finally got out, but not before he had single-handedly dragged our country to the doorstep of victory. Just another chapter in his career, just another chapter in my life.

When I look back to this innings so many years later, one shot stares back at me, screams at me. It was the shot of my childhood. That six off Warne. I spent countless evenings after that practising hitting the ball over the bowler’s head, whether on my own or while playing with my friends in the streets, all the while picturing myself to be my idol. And when I did manage to hit it, I’d raise my bat – not very high, not very low – just as much as Sachin would do, along with that fearless look in his eyes, even if it was just a six, not a fifty. That never sat right with my friends though and I’d often to be sent to look for the ball in the dark afterwards, which got lost more often than not. And let’s not even get started about the broken window glasses!

Years roll by. I have grown up. Sachin too has grown in years. People, though, are beginning to have a go at his throats. I feel depressed. That is not how you treat your national legend. It would’ve meant something if what they were saying was, at least, true. But they couldn’t be more wrong.

How could anyone be ever right when they place boundaries on what Sachin can do? I had learnt my lesson when I was just seven-years old. Some people still hadn’t. People were still looking for his milestones. Putting him under pressure that he’d eventually bow underneath. And each time, I’d feel more and more detached from cricket. I’d feel as if was an old-timer who had seen things these people didn’t see, that I knew things that these people didn’t know.

Time passes. Sachin is getting back to his older groove. I was not surprised. I knew it all along. But did I ever think he’d surpass the Desert Storm? Frankly, I had never thought of that. The Desert Storm was like Pulp Fiction. A classic. Never to be touched or compared with. But one night, I am left to reconsider the entire foundations of my favourites, the ones against whom I rate all knocks. That was the night I witnessed his 175. The event that shook the earth underneath my feet.

A man who is on the cusp of touching 37 conjures one of the most surreal, the most magical and the most phenomenal innings of the order no scale can ever measure.

It’s the Aussies again. We are chasing again. And the target is bigger, much bigger. It was like adapting the Sharjah scenario and extrapolating it for the modern times while taking some of Aussie legends out. And to neutralise that, Sachin was almost 37.