A single Indian victory brings harmony. A single Indian defeat brings anarchy.
As the estranged love affair between media and cricket continues, the normal cricket fan is put under tremendous pressure to differentiate what he feels and what he is made to feel.
Why is it, on a spin friendly track, the entire focus shifts from the poor showing of the spinners to the poor showing of a single batsman?
A frail-hearted cricket fan might be consumed with the media butchering an inimitable cricket legend by the name of Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar. The average fan might feel Sachin’s off-field defence is getting as scratchy as his on-field defence.
But hold on, I’m no diplomat. Cricket is my religion and Sachin Tendulkar is my god.
Any belief worth having must survive doubt. My belief in Sachin Tendulkar has not only survived doubt, but has also managed to massacre it.
It’s not because he’s got the numbers behind him, but the a simple fact he’s taught us how one person can carry the hopes of a billion people over a decade or two.
Every single day of his life there are expectations and no one can be blamed for that apart from himself. He has set the standard so high that even a small error looks magnificent.
Even while so much is happening around him, it is so easy for a person to get engulfed by the situation. But all this man does is walk up to the nets without paying much heed to the hoopla, knock a few deliveries with pristine concentration and requests his coach suggest a few technical changes.
Often the question arises, “Why does he still have to play cricket? He’s achieved every single thing possible!” The answer I’d give to that is, he’s still learning and he will always continue to learn.
Why would a man who has scored over 25000 runs and 100 centuries over a period of 23 years of cricket still feel insecure about his place? Because he has not taken his position for granted and does not want to send out such a signal. Being a keen student of the game you love the most, throws age and reputation out of the equation.
To be fair, he knows the value of this game much more than any cricketer who has ever played the game. The value is just not about the sport and how it is played. The value of it is how much you are able to carry apart from just the sport.
Often people and pundits wonder why Sachin is not treated the same way other legends were treated from other countries. To put things in perspective, cricket is a sport across the globe, but not in India. It is a religion here.
A healthy percentage of the billion-plus population, under any circumstance, will have some aspect of cricket to chat about every single day of their lives. When it is considered as a religion, everybody consumes it. You can’t help it if cricket is more emotional than rational in our country.
Every cricket follower in India is just not a fan. He’s a captain, a selector, an umpire, a fielder, the referee, the curator and he assumes almost every single role available in the sport, including that of a critical spectator.
With almost a billion people like this in our country, spare a thought for the amount of pressure that is heaped on a single personality each and every time he walks into the field. A good part of his career, Sachin’s carried the weight of a billion. No other sportsperson in any sport in the world has managed to do that.
Ganguly, Dravid, Laxman and many other contemporaries are no doubt legends, but they did not carry the same baggage or expectation Sachin carried all these years every single time he stepped onto the cricket field.
How many times have there been emotional uproars during the midst of an important cricketing series? But why is there such a mood swing in the cricket fan’s mind? A century can make you glitter overnight and a failure can make you look worse than a puff of dust.
Like Krisnamachari Srikkanth rightly put it, why would you want to post-mortem a performance even before it’s complete, so openly? Why would you want to make yourself susceptible to unwarranted criticism?
Along with the soup, the media needs just a spark of warmth to ignite the entire situation and elevate it to an altogether new level. Their concern is morphed with commercialism. Their debates are akin to the Joker’s assessment of the Mafia in The Dark Knight – “I know why you decide to have you little ‘group therapy’ sessions in broad day light.”
Ultimately you’ve got to be sensitive to the situation and see what is the top priority of discussion. Is it an entire team failing to live up to expectations or does the focus needs to be shifted to a legend having an elongated rough patch in the climactic stages of his career?
Sachin Tendulkar himself has recently stated that there is not much cricket left in him. He might be god on the field, but he’s still a human off the field. He has come to terms with the idea that the final stages of his razzmatazz-filled cricket career is coming to a close.
You’ve just got to give him his time. You may wonder why other players were asked to leave unceremoniously? Is Sachin so special?
The answer to that is an obvious and emphatic yes!
Sachin is special. He’s just not another cricketer. The problem people are identifying with Sachin is that he’s growing old and therefore holding the position of an upcoming talent. But which cricketer doesn’t have a rough patch in their lives?
Sahcin’s has been treated as god all these years, and people are not able to accept when god makes a human error. That is the dilemma between the heart and the mind. Without getting too emotional about this, let’s take it by the step.
Coming to terms with the current Indian batting set up, India are a batsmen-driven team. But who’s in form? Gambhir – no. Sehwag – no. Pujara – yes. Kohli – almost yes. Yuvraj – no. Sachin – no. Dhoni – no.
So technically, you are just talking about two people in prime form and, at this stage, a wise cricket fan would back experience rather than trying something out of the box and risk losing the little respect still hinging on the famed batting line-up.
Sachin Tendulkar, you either love him or hate him. If you love him, keep the faith. If you hate him, keep the doubt. Both of these feelings are bound to bring back the best from him. Let’s not drive him to an unceremonious retirement. He deserves to be sent off in style.
A lot of questions have been raised about the selectors’ role in such a situation. It’s not a question of the selectors having the guts to go and talk it out with Sachin Tendulkar, it’s just that they unanimously believe that he’s a player of such capability, who will make a call on his own when the time is right.
A lot may call this the selectors being timid, but full marks to them if they have respected the decision making power of a single individual. That’s the only tribute that they can provide this living legend.
Frankly, no one can push him to retirement or change his fate. Only he has the capability to decide his own fate, because he has written it all by himself to date. In the end, the broken pieces of a legendary cricketer will come together. If it doesn’t, it’s not yet the end!
Build your own fantasy cricket team and put it to the test with Draftstars daily fantasy competitions. Pick your match, pick your team and watch the points roll in to take out cash prizes on each match. What are you really gambling with? Set a deposit limit.
The current era is India’s most successful, but there are periods gone by where they were also a tricky proposition.
It was a long day for Ireland in their Group A clash with India, losing by eight wickets. This calamitous moment between No.11 Ben…
India captain Rohit Sharma led from the front with an impressive half-century before retiring hurt to guide his team to an eight-wicket victory over…
India have announced their 2024 ICC Men’s T20 World Cup squad which is set to be played in the USA and Caribbean. The 15-man…
Insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. This quote is often attributed to Albert Einstein, but nobody knows if he…
England's tour of India has ended in abject fashion as the tourists were hammered by an innings and 64 runs inside three days, with…
