The Little Giant

As I type, my thoughts go back to a day in the late 80s. India was touring Pakistan and I would get startled by my mother’s shouts now and then. When my father came back from office, my mother told him about a certain 17 year old who had torn one of the best Pakistani spinners apart. Watching the 9’0 clock news on Doordarshan, I came to know his name. Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar.
I was too small to understand cricket then, and Kapil Dev and Srikanth were the better known players. I mean the players whose names would be there on almost every lip.
Later however, when India toured Australia in 1991 and after the 1992 world cup in Australia, Kapil Dev slowly but surely paved the way for the pint size powerhouse answering to the name of Sachin Tendulkar.
Sachin was our role model when we would play those inter club tournaments. At a subconscious level, almost all of us could identify with him. He had come up from a middle class background almost similar to ours. He began with school cricket, which almost all of us did. We would gape at the NIKE ads in Sports World and The Sportstar, where he had learnt most of his shots by playing gully cricket, which again most of us did. And he had become famous at such a small age, which almost every middle class school going kid wants to do.
I still remember the first time he opened in a One day international match. India was touring New Zealand and the match was being beamed live on Star Sports (then Prime Sports). The way he tore the Kiwis apart, was really heartening. I had gone to a neighbour’s house to watch the match as my father hadn’t got a cable connection then. And that match almost had me kicked out of home. So barbaric was Sachin’s onslaught on Pringle, Morrison and co. that we would jump at almost every shot he played. So much so that, my friend’s father was jolted out of his sleep and needless to say, he complained to my father. When Sachin finally got out that day in Eden Park, Auckland, India were just twenty runs away from victory.
The day he got his first ever century in one day cricket, in Colombo, I was suffering from conjunctivitis. But I risked my dad’s ire and the doctor’s warning of vision loss (yes Mr. Doc had told me that I would become blind if I watched TV for an extended period of time, a period which he did not specify), to watch Sachin tear apart Mc.Dermott, Mc. Grath, Fleming and of course his favourite bunny Warnie.
I can go on and on. The Sharjah sandstorm and the subsequent final, which again, I had watched at another friend’s house is again something which every Indian will remember with pride.
Sachin’s love for cricket and that for the country is really unparalleled. His face says it all. Infact he seems happier when he scores a blob and India wins than when even a century from him fails to help India emerge victorious.
His love for the country and his love for cricket were visible during the 1999 world cup when he came back from home, after his father’s death. The fact that he hit a century was probably God’s gift to him and the country which gave birth to such a great human being. I would have bowed in reverence even if he would have been out for a blob.
I was the saddest person when he was made the captain of the team. In fact I had a fight with my best friend over this matter too. But in the end, I (sadly) won. I would have loved to see him excel as a captain, adding another feather to the proud blue cap. But somehow may intuition would always tell me that he is better off without any liabilities. At that point in time, his shoulders were already over burdened with the expectations of over a billion arm chair critics, who would just look for alibis to tear the cricketers apart, which, mind you is not something which every Tom, Dick and Harry can carry, that too with commendable élan.
Talking of Sachin, one can not but avoid his comparison with another great, Brian Charles Lara. The left hander may have garnered all the records, but this quote from Sir Vivian Richards says it all. “The fact that Sachin is still playing (400 one day internationals), itself speaks about his consistency, which Lara lacked”. Great words from a great himself. And it is true.
I really wish, I were sitting with the great Sir Don Bradman, the day he declared that Sachin plays a lot like him. I would have hugged the don and kissed his cheeks. For someone whose idol was being praised by a great, probably, the greatest man ever to hold the cricket bat, there could not have been a happier moment.
I have never batted as Sachin does. More so, because, I have always been a bowler. But if at all, I get a chance to be born again, I would like to be able to bat at least half as good as he does.
I will consider myself, to be one of the unluckiest persons on this earth, because, I could not watch him in that moment of crowning glory, when he hit the first ever double ton in one day cricket. But, I will wait eagerly for the day when I watch this inning on India Glorious and show my children what greatness is.