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The Moment We’re Never Ready For
Anjali Doshi · Dec 25, 2012 ·
Tendulkar will remain the only cricketer that made a billion switch off their television sets once he was out.
There are some stories that catch newsrooms across the country completely off guard. Like 26/11 or the SEAL team six’s raid on Osama Bin Laden. The kind of stories that blindside you on some idle Tuesday. Then, there are the stories that news desks have had months, sometimes years, to plan for. You know they’re inevitable. So you do the best you can to prepare for them. You have intermittent meetings to discuss how the event will be covered. How the logistics and resources will be best utilised. What the packages, the highlights, the pictures and the reactions will be.
Yet, when that moment arrives, no matter how much and how often you have deliberated over it, it still takes you completely by surprise. And so it was with Sachin Tendulkar’s retirement from one-day cricket. Everybody knew it was going to happen. But when the BCCI’s innocuously titled email “Media Release” appeared in the in-boxes of cricket reporters across the world at 11.20 am IST on Sunday morning, it sent many newsrooms across the country into a flap.
Packages were made, tributes written, career highlights picked out, defining innings culled, the best quotes gleaned. Ready four years ago and frequently updated since. But when the moment was upon us, nobody was ready to say goodbye.
There was every indication that Tendulkar’s future, especially in one-dayers, was uncertain. There was some speculation too about how the selectors were seriously considering dropping him for the upcoming series against Pakistan. But nobody expected it to unfold in this anti-climactic fashion, via a press release. And then, the realisation that without knowing it at the time, we had watched Tendulkar’s last one-day innings nine months ago, when he made that ravaging 52 off 48 against Pakistan in the Asia Cup. Right after his hundredth hundred. How could we possibly know? He didn’t know himself.
Tendulkar didn’t get the fairy-tale end he wished for. That all of us wished for. For him and ourselves. Maybe, he was hoping to play one last one-day series against Pakistan at home before bidding the one-day format goodbye. Maybe, he was left with no choice because the selectors made it clear he would be dropped. Maybe, it was his conversation with Sandeep Patil, the selection committee chairman, and N Srinivasan, the BCCI president, that led to the hastily drafted media release before another press release on the T20 and ODI teams for the Pakistan series followed. Maybe, his best chance at a dream one-day farewell was April 2, 2011 but he was too in love to let it go.
That he didn’t get the fairy-tale ending to his one-day story just makes Tendulkar more real. Maybe, he is just as human as we are, after all. Even though we have spent the better part of a quarter of a century believing he is God.
The recent clamour and chorus among fans and experts asking “When?” and saying “About time” notwithstanding, the sentiment that followed his announcement was hardly one of relief. Or detachment.
After all, how do you say goodbye to someone you have shared such a deep emotional connection with for over 20 years? Most friendships and many marriages don’t last that long. How do you come to grips with losing something you can’t replace? He is everything we want to be: dedicated, hardworking, successful, famous, humble, revered. For 23 years, everything he did was a measure of our self-worth. If he failed, we failed. If he succeeded, we were ok. He was ours to knock down, blame, curse, applaud, gasp at, look up to, cherish, be frustrated with, admire. Tendulkar will remain the only cricketer that made a billion switch off their television sets once he was out. Never before. Never again.
Each one of us, even those who may never have met him, has a collection of very personal Sachin memories connected to more than just the desert storm, the 200, the 175 or the World Cups. Mine date back to the time I made a scrapbook on him as an 11-year-old with newspaper clippings and magazine photos. A few years later, I plastered posters of him on the walls of my bedroom. And when the time came to go away to university at 20, I took those posters with me and put them up in my dorm room in Toronto. I needed Sachin to make me feel at home, 8,000 miles away from home.
From cricket fan to cricket reporter to cricket writer, it’s been quite a journey. Reporting was tough because you try to be as objective as possible. You want to detach yourself from Tendulkar’s failures and milestones. And recalibrating this equation was not easy. I had to now acquaint myself with him as a professional. But he never disappointed here either. The more I interacted with him, the more my admiration grew for his work ethic, his focus, his humility and most of all his sense of commitment, all of which I witnessed first-hand on several occasions.
Tendulkar didn’t get the fairy-tale end he wished for.
During the 2007-08 tour of Australia, my first overseas tour as a television reporter, I gingerly approached Tendulkar after a net session in Adelaide to ask if he would consider doing an interview. He said he would think about my request after the series. When India won the CB series in Brisbane, I ran up to a champagne-soaked Tendulkar to remind him of our conversation. All he said was, “Tomorrow in Melbourne.” I had to cancel my bookings and re-route my flight. I had no time or venue for the interview. And I had no guarantee. But I had to take the chance. When I reached the executive lounge at the Tullamarine Airport, he kept his word. As he always has.
The email in my inbox on Sunday felt like a cruel joke. In one fell swoop, a vital chunk of my youth just disappeared. Tendulkar’s goodbye is a grim reminder to us of our own mortality. A reminder that there is very little time left to make the most of him. And ourselves. Are we ever prepared for the end? The end of all our elaborate plans. Of everything that stands.
The end that has just begun.
http://www.wisdenindia.com/cricket-a..._col_view=true
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The Tendulkar habit
More than any other player, Sachin Tendulkar defined ODI cricket. To start with, he played in over half of all India's games
Harsha Bhogle
December 28, 2012
Dear Sachin,
I guess this means the countdown has begun. It couldn't have been easy for you since cricket has been your life, your solitary love outside of family. I know there are cars and music and seafood, and, as I recently realised, the odd glass of wine, but a bat was what you were meant to hold, and it is with one that you mesmerised a nation and a sport. I wondered if you could have given up Test cricket and stayed on in one-day internationals - until you told me it takes a lot out of you. And you were never one to give less than a 100%.
I guess your body finally won. It had been giving you signals - that permanently cracked bone in your toe, the struggle to get out of bed when the back played up, that elbow... ah, that's a different story altogether, but you always overruled it. It must have sulked but you forced more out of it than anyone else. It was bound to serve notice one day. I mean, you will be 40 soon; people get reading glasses at 40.
But you leave behind an aspect of cricket that you defined. There will be comparisons with other greats in Test cricket, and you will be a chapter in its history, but with the one-dayer, you are its history, in a sense, certainly for India, where you played in more than half the games (463 out of 809). The team had played a mere 165 games before you started, and it is a measure of the impact you had that there were only 17 centuries scored by then. India made a century every 9.70 games. After you started, that number comes down dramatically, to one every 3.52 games. And since that first century, in Colombo, it comes down even further, to one every 3.23 games. To think that you started with two ducks.
Now, of course, the kids keep notching up the hundreds. This young fellow Kohli, for example, who plays with your intensity but whose vocabulary I guess you would struggle with!
Looking back, I can't imagine it took you 78 games to hit a hundred. But then you were floating around in the batting order, spending too much time not being in the thick of it all. I can see why you were so desperate to open the batting in Auckland that day in 1994. Why, when you told me the story of how you pleaded with Ajit Wadekar and Mohammad Azharuddin to give you one opportunity, you sounded like you were still pleading. But I guess you had a history of wanting to be in battle, like that misty night in Kolkata (it was Calcutta in your youth, wasn't it?) when you took the ball in the 50th over with just six to defend and delivered a win.
It seems impossible to imagine that you averaged a mere 30.84 till that day in Auckland, and that you dawdled along at a strike rate of 74. Since then you averaged 47 at a strike rate of 87. It was a marriage meant to be.
I remember that afternoon in Colombo when you approached your first hundred. It had to be Australia, and you were in sublime touch, and you so wanted that first one. You made 110 in 130 balls, but oh, you agonised over those last 15 runs before you got to the century. In a sense, it was like that with the last one too, wasn't it? It was in those moments only that you were a bit like us, that you wanted something so badly, you let it affect your game. But between those two, you were always so much fun, in that belligerent, ruthless, adolescent first phase, in your second, rather more mature and calculated, existence, and of course in that joyous last. What fun that was. The 163 in Christchurch, the 175 in Hyderabad, that 200 in Gwalior, the 120 in Bangalore, the 111 in Nagpur. If it hadn't been for that devilish 100th, would you have continued playing the same way? That 100th hurt you, didn't it, as it did all of us, and I guess we didn't help you by not letting you forget. When the big occasion came, you always played it like another game, even though you knew it was a big day, like those two classics in CB Series finals in 2008, or, of course, those unbelievable nights in Sharjah in 1998. But this 100th took away four or five more.
Somebody said to me he didn't want you to quit because it would mean his childhood was over. It isn't just them. Just as the child in you never grew up, so too did many grizzled old men become children when they saw you in blue
I know how disappointed you were after the 2007 World Cup. You weren't batting in your favourite position, you were unhappy (if you could ever be unhappy in the game that you revered and tended to like a servant), and without quite saying it, you hinted at the fact that you might have had enough. But the dawn always follows the darkest hour.
After the age of 34, in a young man's game, you averaged 48.36. Even by the standards you set yourself, that was unbelievable (in spite of all those nineties, when, almost inevitably, I seemed to be on air). And most of those came without your regular partner. While Sourav was around, you averaged almost 50 at a strike rate of 89. The mind still lingers on the time the two of you would come out at the start of a one-day international. (I watched one of those partnerships the other night and it seemed only the commercial breaks could stop you two.)
By now you were playing the lap shots more than the booming drives down the ground. It puzzled me and made many nervous. "I want to play down the ground too," you told me, "that is why I am playing the paddle shot. As soon as they put a fielder there, I'll play the big drive." You were playing with the field the way your great friend Brian Lara did when he was on top of his game.
But beyond the numbers some memories remain. I couldn't believe how you went after Glenn McGrath in Nairobi. I must have watched that clip 50 times but understood it more when you told me you wanted to get him angry, that on a moist wicket his line-and-length routine would have won them the game. That pull shot is as fresh in the memory as that first cover drive off Wasim Akram in the 2003 World Cup when you took strike because you thought the great man would have too many tricks for Sehwag.
I remember that World Cup well, especially an unheralded innings in Harare that helped beat a sticky Zimbabwe and put the campaign back on track. And your decision to keep the Player of the Tournament award in your restaurant because you would much rather have had the smaller winner's medal. It told me how much that meant to you, and when I saw the tears on your face that night in Mumbai, I instantly knew why.
I had only once seen you in tears and that was at a World Cup too. You were practising in Bristol. You were just back from your father's funeral and were wearing the most peculiar dark glasses. There was none of the usual style to them; they were big enough to cover half your face. You agreed to my request to speak to the media and briefly took them off while you were arranging your kit bag. I was taken aback to see your eyes swollen. You must have been in another world but you were courteous as ever. It was only Kenya the next day, but I can see why you rate that hundred.
There are so many more. I was only a young cricket writer when I started watching you play, so there will be many. That is also why so many of us will miss you. Somebody said to me he didn't want you to quit because it would mean his childhood was over. It isn't just them. Just as the child in you never grew up, so too did many grizzled old men become children when they saw you in blue. You were a great habit, Sachin.
So you are done with the blue then. But the whites remain. That is our first image of you - the curly hair, the confident look, the front foot stride… all in white. I hope you have fun in them. You don't need to try too hard to prove a point to us because when you have fun we do too.
Cheers, you did well for us. And you gave life and strength to our game.
Harsha Bhogle is a commentator, television presenter and writer. His Twitter feed is here
Feeds: Harsha Bhogle
© ESPN EMEA Ltd.
http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine...ry/598770.html
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Sach
Sometime in the early 90s trump cards were in vogue. Like most people who grew up in the 90s, I have wasted months on that stupid game. The more popular variety was the WWF one; there was also a less popular but a far more entertaining one on cricket too. You get Desmond Haynes in your turn and you merely snatch the card from your opponent he was the ultimate trump card with the most matches, runs, hundreds, and fifties in ODI cricket. If you get Viv, your only fear is if your opponent holds the Haynes card in that turn. Perhaps the worst card to have in the game was that of Sachin. Very few matches, fewer fifties, and no hundreds. Yet, the joy of holding the Sachin card was unmatched.
While Sachin was taking giant leaps in the world of test cricket, he hardly set the world on fire in ODIs in his first five years. There were cameos of all kind mind blasting, elegant, brutal, and responsible - but the big score was always eluding him. There were all sorts of theories on his inability to score hundreds in ODIs then. Sunny even suggested that he should stay away from ODI cricket and play only tests.
When the first hundred eventually came, he didn't quite break open the glass ceiling as much as he opened the floodgates. He nearly institutionalized the art of scoring a century in ODIs. While 90s witnessed a boom in ODIs, more matches were played on truer and flatter wickets the world over, and perhaps the decade even brought in an avalanche of great ODI batsmen. But without Sachin's constantly rising benchmark, it's hard to imagine we would have seen as many ODI hundreds post '94 as we have.
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The quote on statistics being like mini skirts is often invoked in the context of cricketers whose record don't quite justify their impact on the game, but to me it's most appropriate for Sachin. His ODI numbers are so humongous, so colossal, so obscene that it's easy to get lost in making sense of them and lose out on the essence of Sachin. The records stand as a testimony to the impact of his methods, but that's only the byproduct the real deal was his method.
How else do you explain the significance of 27th March 1994 to so many Indians, and cricket fans at large? It was the second match of a bilateral series. India dismissed New Zealand for 142 and had the luxury of 50 overs to get there. The regular opener was unfit, which according to a prominent cricket journalist had something to do with a visit to a night club on the eve of the match. Sachin took his place at the top of the order in more ways than one - and scored 82 of the most thrilling runs in this format of the game ever. He didn't help India win a critical match, nor was it a challenging chase. There was very little context to the game except India coming back to square the series. Yet.
That is the essence of Sachin.
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Who will write a biography of Sir Donald Bradman, must be able to write a history of Australia in the same period wrote CLR James in Beyond a Boundary. Along similar lines, I can add that for a generation of Indians their respective autobiographies will be hollow without Sachin.
Sidvee has compiled a fine list of the delightful micro moments of Sachin's career here, and writes for so many of us, in a way that none of us could, on growing up with Sachin here. There is very little to add to what he's already covered.
If a large part of our formative years was spent in watching Sachin bat, a larger part was spent on anticipating a Sachin innings. The night before a Sachin innings is a conglomeration of all possible human emotions, yet the ecstasy of the impending masterpiece rose above everything else. If he scored a hundred every eighth match since scoring his first one, it didn't stop us from dreaming one every match. For every hundred there are at least seven shattered dreams, but it didn't stop us from losing our sleep, from setting ourselves up for prime disappointment, from going to our annual exam in school groggy-eyed, from going to a critical day in office deprived of sleep and with very little motivation to work. We ran the risk of losing out on academics, a possible promotion at work, sometimes the obsession even came in the way of relationships, but he made it all worthwhile. Looking back at it now, except for the anticipation of a Sachin special, nothing has remained constant.
If ecstasy overpowered all other emotions on the eve of the match, reality doesn't always comply. For someone who's played 463 matches and been dismissed in most of them, a Sachin dismissal is as common a sight as any in cricket. Yet, it always comes as a shock. He can get out for a duck against Namibia, or after a 175 against Australia, but the reaction to his dismissal is always intense, as if it's a violation of the first principles of cricket. The scar a Sachin dimissal leaves behind makes it foolhardy to so emotionally invest in his batting again, but we did it. For 23 years and counting.
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In a career of such sustained excellence, '98 stands well and truly above the rest of the years. He was walking on water. He decimated Warnie and pulverised all comers. The expectations had become so absurd and almost inhuman that he could only have disappointed us. At the end of a long and punishing home season, Sachin went to Sharjah as a hero and came back as God.
Fleming drifts down on the pads, Sachin plays his precise trademark flick to fine leg for a two to qualify for the final. A nation rejoices, commentators going bonkers, and journalists running out of adjectives to fill their match reports. That's when he slapped us for underestimating him. Little did we know that when we were looking at 24 from 30 balls, he was thinking of 63 from 30.
First ball after qualifying, Sachin danced down the wicket to play the most audacious inside out cover drive off Fleming. Tony Greig is screaming on commentary as if he'd just understood the climax of The Prestige. Momentarily, he even threatened to sprint on water. The singular stroke that separated him from the mortal world.
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It was the first one dayer of the tri-series in South Africa in October '01. Sachin was coming back from a foot injury, and was struggling against Pollock and Nel, while Ganguly at the other end was in the form of his life. I have seen batsmen scratching their way out of form with a big innings in tests, like Dravid in Perth '08 and Sachin in Sydney '04.
But I have never seen a batsman, leave alone one of Sachin's pedigree, hang around for so long without being able to play with any sort of fluency in ODI cricket. This is also true of Sachin's career at large. No matter how rotten his luck has been, or how terribly he may have been out of form, I have never seen him throw his bat around in the hope of rediscovering his touch. The diligence with which he works his way back to form has been as compelling as watching him walk on water. While Sachin is always celebrated for the mastery of his craft, what is often underappreciated is that he's the game's most humble student too.
101 of 129 balls against Pollock, Nel, Ntini, Kallis, Klusener and Kemp when he was at his scratchiest.
Master and Student.
http://cornerd.posterous.com/sach
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Schedule for the IND-AUS test series has been announced.
1st Test, Delhi – Feb 22-26, 2013
2nd Test, Mohali – Mar 2-6, 2013
3rd Test, Hyderabad – Mar 14-18, 2013
4th Test, Chennai – Mar 22-26, 2013
So even if this happens to be Sachin's last test series ( hopefully not), he gets to play his last match at Chepauk, a place where he's been most successful.
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That the last test is at Chepauk itself is an indicator that it will be his last Test. (If he lasts that long)
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Our Diehard Sachinist Manu Spartan Singh Holding a Chart "ODI CRICKET LOST ITS VALUE AFTER TENDULKAR'S RETIREMENT" at the Boxing Day test between Australia and Sri Lanka in MCG now.
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Humorous Message For Sachin Tendulkar at Dressing Room in Bangalore Chinnaswamy stadium Today.
He Used to Hear Music Quite Often !
