That Magnificent Man and His Flaming Willow

The Sachin story. Everyone who knows cricket will have one. The first time they heard of him, the first time they saw him play, the first record they remember, the finest innings. My Sachin story comes from the inside pages of Sportstar. One day, sometime in 1987 or 1988, I saw a small write-up about a boy who was performing very well in local cricket. I don’t remember much about the article, just that it had a photo of a curly-haired boy posing with a bat. I am not sure, but I think the word “phenom” was also used. I remembered this article when he first played for India. I remember it still.

What does Sachin Tendulkar mean to Indians? To cricket fans? To journalists and reporters? You will find a lot of trees were felled to answer that. A lot of virtual space was used up. Written by people a lot knowledgeable than me. I am writing just about what he meant to me. I think I can safely say that is something that I am the most capable to write about.

Having spent the definitive part of my kidhood in the plains of Africa, I arrived into a strange new world. I heard people discussing about the 1983 World Cup win and I was proud as any Indian would be, without knowing anything about it. Compare it to the news that an Indian won the Olympic gold for synchronized swimming. We know nothing, but hey, it’s a countryman! I had seen neighbourhood boys playing and tried to learn about it. The first cricket term I learnt was “light run”. Much later I found that it was “late run” and used to prevent the batsmen from taking runs off misfields. Even later I found that it didn't exist in any other level of cricket. 

I began following cricket when we started getting live feed on TV. Slowly the passion increased. Being a thorough non-sportsman, I was in awe of cricketers. A passionate patriot, I would take issue with anyone criticizing my team. I used to be a pretty well-mannered kid growing up, never ever recalling being spanked, but I do remember my mother telling me once that “you do not talk to your father like that.” He had this very dry way of looking at cricket. India was going to lose. Every time an Indian wicket fell or we conceded a boundary, it was the same. I would usually try to remain above the goading, but this time I couldn't. 

Those times India lost a lot. Even to Pakistan. Hell, most of all to Pakistan. Then Tendulkar came. And we started winning more. The team was not that better than before. They were not playing that better than before. It was just that he was better than the other team. Oh, it is a team game, and all that jazz. But we believed that Sachin could defeat 11 other players. And he would. We still lost half the games.But that was, as we liked to say, because he was playing against 21 and not 11. Cricket became more about a one-man game than a team game. And I was not the only one thinking so.

Things changed towards the end of the millennium. India became an economic power, the Indian cricket fan was discovered, and the BCCI started to cash in on that. Slowly with better cricketers and foreign coaches we discovered winning as a team. That is one view. I prefer to think of it as the time when all those cricketers who were inspired by Tendulkar finally became old enough and good enough to play for the country. Find me one of the new generation of cricketers who came to play international cricket because of a reason other than Sachin Tendulkar. Virat Kohli, who is famously supposed to have a vocabulary of only four-letter words, said after the 2011 triumph, “He has carried the burden of the nation for 21 years. Now it is time for us to carry him.” It may become the most quotable sentence in cricket, but you needed to have lived in this age to know that those two simple sentences were also the truest.

It was a burden. Not because we wanted him to do well, but because the expectations we had of him were unfairly flexible. He kept meeting them, and we kept raising the bar.Until it reached a level where no one could meet it. And then we were ready to find fault with him for it.  One of his club captains once said, “From the first day, it was very clear that this guy was destined for greatness. Unless he messed it up himself." He didn't. He continued to play cricket. 

For millions like me, Sachin means something. Something they would not be able to eloquently describe in the pages of a magazine or on a cricket website. Something that is just our own. That is why every time he goes out to bat, noise pollution is at the highest. Every time he gets out, people walk out or switch off their TVs. Every time a nonsensical record is dreamt up, people wait for it. And every time someone criticizes him, someone else criticizes back.

Sachin Tendulkar did not get us our freedom from oppression. By existing in this Information Age, his achievements on the field are recorded for posterity. Generations to come will scarce disbelieve that one such as this in flesh and blood played cricket. But what they will find hard to believe is what he meant to others, his compatriots and opponents, his followers and detractors, to those who cared and those who didn't.