Thursday, November 5, 2009

In awe of the man called Sachin Tendulkar!

(I'm writing this just after India (347/10) lost their match against Australia (350/4) in Hyd.)


Just a while after India lost the match, I get a message from one of my good friends, who says "more than winning, we lost because of Tendulkar". And that was the last thing I thought anyone who had watched the match would say...

I wrote back to him telling the same and adding in the end that it is time for Sachin to retire... we Indians don’t deserve him after all...

It is sort of impossible for me to understand how someone can blame him for this loss. How easily we forget that he is human at the end of it. Even he can play a wrong shot; even he can have a lapse in concentration.

But no, he is not allowed to, coz he is Tendulkar! He is expected to score a century in every match. He is expected not only to score a century, but even a double century (which he almost did) if that is what it takes for the team to win. We so conveniently forget that there are 10 other batsmen too in the team!

Well, I guess it is but natural that people expect so much from him. We are so used to, aren't we? More so because he has been living up to the expectations for so many years now. Many would argue that that is not true. But again, as I said most would forget that even others in the team are supposed to contribute!

I wonder how his heart must have sunk to see the team lose in the end. There was so little they could have done wrong to lose from where he had left, and they did exactly that!

Considering the kind of innings he played, they should have at least won it for him. May be Jadeja should have shown some maturity, may be Praveen Kumar could have dived in the end and then may be Munaf could have hit a boundary off the last ball...!

Coming back to Tendulkar, I couldn’t help being in awe of the man! He was in the groove today. I could see the Tendulkar of yore again! And felt as happy as I had felt as a child! And suddenly remembered how I couldn't wait to get back from school when there was a cricket match! What if India was more likely to lose, we had hope...we had Tendulkar!

Really, he is the greatest, isn't it? There is very little reason to believe otherwise. The times that he has played in, the kind of opponents he has played against, I don't think there ever was or will be another one like him!

His amazing consistency, undying dedication, child-like enthusiasm, insatiable hunger for more, combined with down to earth simplicity ... really, not many of us can relate to him.

We can only look up to him and be in awe of the man he his... and proudly say that yes, we lived in the times of Tendulkar, Sachin Tendulkar!