Sachin Tendulkar: the greatest sporting icon

जागरण संपादकीय ब्लॉग

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Sachin Tendulkar: the greatest sporting icon.

Twenty-four years in competitive sport at the highest level. His departure marks the end of an era. He started out at the time when the Berlin wall stood tall, U.S.S.R was one nation; Iran and Iraq were the most talked about foes, Osama and Saddam were US allies. India had just begun to dabble in coalition politics at the centre and we were still a closed economy. Juxtapose the then circumstances with present day reality and it seems we are talking about another world.

Good boys can finish at the top. Who better to epitomize the contrasting parable? Never abrasive, always humble, no brazenness, no blemish whatsoever. Yes we deliberately choose to gloss over the monkey gate scandal.
Performance on the field magnificent, conduct on and of it, exemplary. Few people can evoke admiration and affection in equal measure.

His charm was hypnotic. Several of us would recall where we were or what we did, the day Sachin made his debut; or when he scored his first hundred or when he led that mammoth run chase. His performance was akin to attaining a personal milestone. We equated his achievements with national accomplishments. His century elevated the mood of an entire nation and some may say even propelled the Sensex or the gold price.

How often have we witnessed talent frittered away due to lack of application? Seldom talent does not realize its full potential because perhaps nature was simply not kind. It is rare to find the optimal blend of talent, discipline and destiny, and in this magnitude, one may say freakish. In the world of sports and arts, we would be hard pressed to look beyond Amitabh Bachchan and Sachin Tendulkar on whom the almighty has bestowed his munificence in such plenitude. Men who have been canonized not just during their lifetime but also during their active working days.

We have seen sportsmen phenomenally talented, hugely popular and fairly successful. Yet in the Indian sporting history, very few could capture the imagination of the entire nation for generations.

Dhyanchand was our first sporting icon; a product of pre independent India. A colossal success during his career.

Milkha Singh was independent India’s first sporting legend; a Nehruvian era star whose real life hardships added to his mystique.

Sunil Gavaskar, the first millionaire sportsman of India. Hero of the middle class through the seventies when euphoria of independence had started to ebb. He was credited with bringing professionalism into Indian sports.

Kapil Dev: his arrival marked a watershed in Indian cricket in particular and sports in general. Small town boy who lacked finesse but went on to become a world-class sportsman on the strength of his natural ability. He could be lauded for bringing in the killer instinct in our sportsmen. One of the earliest and baronial images on colour television in India was the beaming Kapil Dev holding aloft the world cup trophy.

And then arrived Sachin Tendulkar who surpassed his illustrious predecessors in almost every way.
While Dhayanchand’s achievements were nonpareil, we have only read and heard of him. He played in times when there was no television broadcast. Milkha Singh also suffered from lack of video footage and for all his natural talent, was in all fairness at best an Asia or common wealth level athlete at least on the basis of achievement.
Gavaskar and Kapil Dev overcame the shortages and experienced adulation and longevity that then were unique. But they too were products of a controlled economy.
What separated Sachin from Gavaskar or Kapil was that his arrival coincided with the liberalization of the Indian economy two years hence. He was catapulted into superstardom, became the poster boy for the marketers. Yes his talent was prodigious, his achievements monumental but there was also an element of marketing genius that India had not witnessed till then, which created the legend of Sachin Tendulkar. The adulation, adoration and the moolah that followed were unprecedented. If Gavaskar and Kapil Dev were the first millionaire sportsmen of India, Sachin shifted levers to become the first billionaire Indian sportsman.

On sheer batting prowess, he was the closest thing to perfection. Even the greatest of them all, Sir Donald Bradman saw in him his mirror image. Of his contemporaries a placard in a stadium once very appropriately read, “for timing, look at Saurav”, “for technique, look at Dravid”, “for elegance, look at VVS”, “for grit, look at Ponting”, “for devastation look at Hayden”, “for flair, look at Lara” and “for all of it in one batsman, look at Sachin”. End of discussion. There might have been better timers of the cricket ball, batsmen with better technique or temperament but the combination of it all in one man was best found in him.

As a cricketer, Sachin transcended sporting and national barriers. He could only be compared with the greatest across the world from different sporting categories. He belonged to the exclusive club where only the likes of Pele, Ali, Jordan, Federer, Phelps and Bolt could gain access.

But what distinguished Sachin from even them was that he had to deal with the expectations of a billion people for over two decades.
The statistics he has earned are so daunting that one wonders if there was anything left for him to achieve? Yet on poring over the record books, questions emerge that rankle his supporters.
He has not scored a triple hundred in a test innings. A century in both the innings of a test match has also eluded him till now. I say hitherto because he has not yet played his last innings.
The fact that he has not been able to win as many test matches for us as we would have liked also makes us cringe. While on several occasions, he has single handily carried us to the brink, numerous times we have failed to cross the line. His record in fourth innings of a test match is not the best.

These perhaps are the few or rather the only sporting deeds where he has fallen short of the stratospheric standards we have set for him. While only a handful may have performed better than Sachin even on the aforementioned parameters, others being lesser mortals were not condemned to such intense scrutiny. It might be construed as testimony of his failure on the big stage, under pressure; it is also a revelation of our idolatry mindset where we are simply recalcitrant that our heroes our also mortals.

For billions of Sachin Tendulkar admirers worldwide, it’s about time to reconcile that he is not immortal. Sachin Tendulkar contrary to an overused sobriquet is no God of cricket. And yet when we look at the past quarter of a century, glean through the record books, shudder at the prospect that some of the feats may never be repeated, reflect in the joy that he has provided to all the cricket viewers, we are prompted to think, he might not be God, he certainly has been his favorite child.