One love for the boyish looks,
One love for the cover drive,
One love for India’s pride,
One Love for the batting genius.
On a day when the Nation’s railway budget got shunted in the House of difference sorry parliament, one man mercilessly derailed the South African express with inhumane brutality. An act of crime so well executed that it even earned the admiration of his victims.
On 24th February of 2010, Charl Langdvelt earned himself a place in the record books by conceding a single of the final over. Not that he had done it for the first time but it was that momentous single which weighed a whopping two tons. Langdvelt could have very easily earned Godse’s reputation in India had his heroics succeeded. At the other end though, stood a figure which had a billion people breathing down his neck, a billion pair of eyes got blinded to the rest of the world but for this five foot boy wonder who stood between their ecstasy and melancholy for the days to come.
Right from the Senas to the rest of India, Cricket fanatics to sports lovers, Twitter freaks to the blog martyrs and even the pro and anti telenganas, all for once acceded to unison like they did on 92 previous occasions.
"He is my favorite player. I had said that one day he would go on to break all batting records and now you see him scoring runs and runs."
Javed Miandad kinda saw it coming.
It was once again, Sachin Tendulkar who broke another batting record. In fact; in this case he was the first person to reach that milestone. Sachin scored the first ever double ton in the history of One day International cricket. A record that stood for almost One and a half decade finally got rewritten by this batting genius.
"Better than Brian Lara and Ricky Ponting, the other two great players of my era. Better than Sir Viv Richards, Sunil Gavaskar and Allan Border. And I would even say better than Sir Don Bradman himself."
Nasser Hussain runs out of comparables for Tendulkar.
At an age when kids craved for brightly dyed school uniform, he adored the white robes, his batch was the Indian emblem embedded on his helmet and his daily stint in the nets had longer periods than his time in the classroom. He had a liking for geometry but he was his own tutor; he conceived theta off the arm of a bowler, possessed a natural affinity for angles of bisection, an innate ability to draw straight angles but with different equipment though and liked the square more than any other shape.
An argument or rather a statement from many “Imagine had Ponting or Hayden debuted at an age when Sachin did, they would have outscored Sachin by miles”. It’s a pity that they don’t realize the rationale in it, “at an age when these contemporary greats were learning the art of playing within the V, this prodigy had by then essayed poems of aesthetic marvel in the most intimidating conditions in the cricketing fraternity.”To be precise, he was so ridiculously talented that the selectors had no other option but to play the boy in the Gentlemen’s game. Boy! Dint he give the men a run for their money!!!
Not many aged 16 would score a ton in each of their debut matches in the Duleep, Irani and Ranji trophy (making to the squad at that age in itself is commendable).
When many would have preferred the comfort of resting in the warm dressing room to the gloomy skies of Trent Bridge, he turned a cold shoulder to the lanky English fast bowlers and stood between England and victory on the final day scoring his maiden ton.
Soon, the boy tag gave way to the Giant killer in him. The agonizingly close finish at Napier when his eventual coach proved to be his nemesis, stopping him from becoming the youngest ever player to score a test century, the Opera at the Sydney cricket ground and
the pillaging at Perth on a track that appeared only slightly pale in green than the outfield prompted Dean Jones to comically warn Allan Border standing beside him in the slip cordon saying “this little guy would one day definitely outscore your record”.
Taylor But we thought the extra pace and extra bounce would sort him out. You could expect an Indian player to make a century at the SCG where it's slower and lower, but at the WACA it takes a special player to pick up the bounce and pace of the wicket in such a short time and Sachin was able to do that. It proved that he was always going to be a player for the future.
His brilliance was not a flash in the pan rather a lightning that struck everywhere from Trent bridge to Jo’burg, even the white lightning got electrocuted in his own backyard.He was in a league of his own in the test format but it took a while for his geniuses to cut loose in the shorter format. It took 78 matches before he made his first One Day International Century. But he made the format his own once he got promoted to open the batting for India.
Where others perished, this man thrived. Hostility aggravated his hunger for big runs; bowler’s pride annihilated in his humble blade, seeing the back of this man was a dream for any bowler. His was a rare blend of batting, an ensemble of the solidity of Sunny Gavaskar and the sublimity of Sir Vivian Richards, his sabotage disarmed the opposition’s attack at will.
Sachin had become the country’s most followed sporting idol, even got elevated to the status of a demi god in his early twenties.Being the lone crusader of the Indian batting for almost a decade in the 90’s, he formulated the perfect blend of offense and defense and saw his team home more often than any cricketer; his panache earned the admiration and awe of millions around the world. He made ruthlessness look beautiful, demise of records a regularity and his artistry inspired even the most passive pair of eyes.
His enduring journey has for over two decades been India’s reason of celebration, unanimity, pride, joy and even disappointment.
In a Nation that is as diverse as his array of shots and yet to be its most loved soul really requires the work of a genius. This quiet, hardnosed task master has not only earned the dismay of the leather charmers for over two decades but has caused equal distress to the game’s historians and statisticians delegating to them an eternal chore of number manipulation.
