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December 26, 2012, 4:48 am
Sachin Was Us, and We Were Sachin
By ARNAB RAY
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/...nk-blog480.jpg
Students in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, held a poster of cricketer Sachin Tendulkar after he batted for his landmark 100th century, in this March 16, 2012 file photo.
If love is defined by that which gives without expecting anything in return, then I guess we love our cricketers.
We skip classes or call in sick to work to watch them roar, we wake up at odd hours of the night to cheer them on, we spend countless evenings fighting away on Internet bulletin boards defending our favorites against their critics, we feel elated by their success and crestfallen at their failure. And all this we do for total strangers, who would walk by us at best or get their security detail to shove us aside at worst, if our paths ever crossed. It’s all crazy, but then that’s what they say about love.
And so it’s only natural that when cricketers you have followed and adored for years ride away into the sunset, sadness will come. But then our fickle hearts discover new objects of affection, and a cricket hero becomes, like a former crush, consigned to the misty depths of forgetfulness.
Yet Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar was not just another cricketer.
He was the sport. One of my earliest memories of Sachin Tendulkar — and memories of Sachin are always very vivid — was an exhibition game in Pakistan. The big guns were going through the motions as India moved toward another inevitable defeat. Then in to bat comes this child-man, all of 16, who decides to go for the win. He unleashes the most audacious of strokes at Pakistan’s best spinners, Qadir and Mushtaq, and scores 50-odd off only 18 balls, an almost unheard-of feat in those days, when a run-a-ball was considered a blinder.
In the process, he captures the imagination of a generation of schoolboys, myself among them, who, for the first time, saw the projection of their cricketing fantasies realized in the real world, cricket played as it is played in boyhood dreams — sixes, fours and never a step taken back. From that day on, Sachin became cricket. Cricket became Sachin. And that’s how it stayed.
He was hope. The nation switched its TV sets on when he came to the middle. They were switched off when he walked back. The pitch might crumble, the deliveries might swerve, the others might depart. But as long as he was there, thumping the ball through the covers off his back foot or angling to leg or going straight down the ground with a voluptuous bat-punch, there was always a chance.
The hope that he brought did not confine itself to the game of cricket. In a country where success in the public arena is more a matter of who you are than what you do, Sachin made us believe that it was possible, maybe not easy but possible, for a middle-class boy of no pedigree, armed merely with godly abilities and an obsession for perfection, to make it to the very top.
He was us. When he was a teenager, and so were we, we could contrast him with the dowdy, joyless uncles that were his teammates. “See, that’s the way we, the new generation, play the game – with a devil-may-care attitude. Those oldies, they just don’t have it.” When he grew up, and so did we, we would appreciate his maturity. “See, that’s how a man should be, responsible, stoic and yet supremely confident.”
When he became old (in his late 30s, he is considered ancient by the standards of modern competitive cricket), so did we. We would point to him diving on the field, or outhitting a younger colleague, and say, “See, that’s what our generation was about. Talent. Commitment. Those young whippersnappers, they just don’t have it.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=FrDsffFEP0M
Now, no more. Sachin has retired from the one-day game, a format he revolutionized, leaving a giant hole in the ground. Fluttering around are burning scraps of memories — a pirouette hook, ferociously graceful, on a fast Australian pitch; a sandstorm in Sharjah; Shaun Pollock vanishing into the second tier; Shoaib Akthar smashed to pulp in that World Cup match of 2003; a magical over in the Hero Cup when the great man bowled, yes bowled, India to victory; and finally, another man — once a teen, then a young man and now middle-aged — silently praying, “God, if you are really there, not that I think you are, please let Sachin score a century today and let India win. Please.”
That middle-aged man I scarcely recognize in the mirror will still follow cricket, will still cheer India on, but somewhere, somehow, the personal connection has been irreparably broken. The war of cricket will still be fought. It’s just that I will not be in it.
So goodbye, dear Sachin. We shall not hunt together again, my friend.
By the light of day, Arnab Ray is a research scientist at the Fraunhofer Center For Experimental Software Engineering and also an adjunct assistant professor at the Computer Science department of the University of Maryland at College Park. Come night, he metamorphoses into blogger , novelist (“May I Hebb Your Attention Pliss” and “The Mine”) and columnist.
He is on Twitter at @greatbong.
http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/...e-were-sachin/
Sachin Tendulkar: Did such a man really exist?
Published: Monday, Dec 24, 2012,
By Suresh Menon | Agency: DNA
Sachin Tendulkar is the greatest player to have batted in coloured clothes. For nearly two decades after he made his one-day international debut, Tendulkar was the king without a crown. That crown a World Cup title came in his sixth attempt, last year in India. Unlike in the longer format of the game where you had to take in elements other than pure cricket to bolster your case, in one-day cricket there has never been any doubt. Tendulkar was the best.
There were two options in Tendulkar's bag guaranteed to wipe away the frustration and the public humiliation of recent months. He could have scored a series of centuries, or he could have announced his retirement. The recent disappointments should not colour our appraisal of an all-time great. That he announced his decision to retire on the day the selectors were choosing an Indian team might suggest a kindness he certainly deserved. It does not matter now.
By quitting ODI four months short of his 40th birthday, Tendulkar has left his options open in Test cricket. He played less than a third of India's 37 ODI matches since the World Cup win, and the light was surely dimming. Yet the decision, symbolically arrived at on the longest night of the year, will usurp on-field events as the biggest cricket story of the year. Even partial retirements remind us of life's inevitabilities.
More remarkable than the runs he scored has been the manner in which Tendulkar retained his passion and his fitness over 23 years. Periodically, his body parts which threatened to end his career from the shoulder to the heel and everything in between became national news. But each time Tendulkar came back with renewed vigour, greater hunger and despite the breaks starred in more than half the ODI ever played by India.
One day cricket has its own rhythm, its own context, its own shortened narrative as distinct from what Toynbee might have called the rise and fall of civilised cricket had he been a fan of Tests. The ODI lives and dies by its figures.
And since shorter the game, greater the importance of statistics,here are some: Tendulkar played more games (463), made more runs (18,426), and more centuries (49) than anybody else. Of the Top 10 batsmen those with over 10,000 runs only Jacques Kallis has the marginally better average, only Sanat Jayasuriya the better strike rate and only Ricky Ponting held more catches than Tendulkar (140). In that list, only Jayasuriya had more wickets than Tendulkar's 154. This is one of those cases where the stats do not lie Tendulkar was indeed the best of the lot, the first choice in a game for Earth versus Mars.
India won more than half the matches Tendulkar played in, his importance underlined by his average of 56.63 (career average: 44.83) and strike rate of 90.31 (career: 86.23). He is no longer the only man to have made a double century in the format his colleague Virender Sehwag having overtaken that 200 with a 219, but he was the first to suggest the possibility of attaining that score and then living up to expectations.
One final statistic and then we shall move on. Tendulkar made his first century in his 79th match, having made the career-changing move to opening the batting in his 70th match after Navjot Sidhu pulled out with a strained neck in Auckland. Tendulkar, then a few days short of his 21st birthday, smashed 82 off just 49 deliveries with 15 boundaries and two sixes. The greatest ODI opener, and the greatest ODI century-maker had been set on his way over six months and ten matches the greatest all-time ODI batsman followed inevitably. At 16, on his first tour of Pakistan, Tendulkar was not expected to play ODI. And then came Peshawar. Tendulkar's treatment of Abdul Qadir, the great leg spinner is part of folklore now. The boy had curly hair, curiosity in his eyes, and steel in his wrists. He played only because it was not an official match, and Kapil Dev was nursing a stiff neck. At that stage there was no plan to play Tendulkar in ODI at all. But after that he couldn't be denied.
Eighteen deliveries changed everything. In that time he made 53 (unbeaten), hitting Mushtaq Ahmed for two huge sixes, and then Abdul Qadir for 27 runs in a single over, with three sixes in a row. There was no wild slogging. When Qadir dropped one short as Tendulkar stepped out, the batsman had the arrogance to go through with his shot anyway. The bat made a lovely arc, and for all we know the ball is still travelling no one could find it.
At the other end was the captain, Krishnamachari Srikkanth, no slouch himself. Later that evening he said, referring to the one-day series, 'the little bugger' must play now. The little bugger has been playing ever since, while many of those he played with are coming to terms with the challenges of middle age.
Whereas in Test cricket, Tendulkar has played some great innings but few definitive ones, in ODI, he has played both. The centuries in Sharjah, for instance, twice in succession against Australia, the 98 in the World Cup, the double century in Gwalior against South Africa. If the Sharjah centuries were made by a sportsman at the peak of his powers, the double came off the bat of a mature run-gatherer who hardly played a single stroke that was not in the coaching manual.
And therein lay Tendulkar's greatness as a batsman in the shorter format he combined orthodoxy and innovation to a degree unmatched by any of his contemporaries. He could slash over third man with panache or whip the ball from outside the off stump past mid on with power. He could be beaten and still recover to hit a boundary. But above all, he could frustrate the best bowlers by playing with a straight bat and a sense of mischief.
He loved to open, to hit over the top when the field was in, and strike when the ball was new. With Sourav Ganguly he formed one of the most potent opening partnerships, the drive as straight as an arrow early in the innings indicating that it was going to be his day.
He set such high standards that not only was he expected to score a century every time he went out to bat, he was expected to pulverise the bowling. He did both through most of his career, and that spoilt us. Perhaps our greed was greater than his ambition which from an early age was no longer exclusively his alone. Every thousand runs was seen merely as the starting point for the next thousand. In the end, we had to be content with fewer than 20,000 runs and 50 centuries. Such seductive round figures, but increasingly less meaningful to a player who had achieved so much.
The Tendulkar-shaped hole at the top of the order will always remind us of the man who occupied that space, took Indian cricket to great heights, and in the end bowed out leaving behind the figures, and the memories. Our grandchildren will ask us: Did such a man really exist?
Suresh Menon is Editor, Wisden Almanack, and author most recently of Bishan: Portrait of a Cricketer
http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/rep...-exist_1781056
Colour leaves his life
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Aditya Iyer : New Delhi, Mon Dec 24 2012
In both the photographs and the videos on Youtube, the frame is hazy. On one end of the pitch, a bunch of grainy players, all wearing green jerseys and yellow pyjamas, lie low. At the end closer to the camera, a batsman squats. The subjects are largely unrecognisable. But thanks to the solitary figure's colours, no fan who put up with the 90s will fail to pinpoint the significance of the moment. Or its relevance in defining Sachin Tendulkar.
Light blue top, navy blue bottom. Sharjah, 1998 and a sand storm. A crisis, a century and a loss. India, both country and cricket team, came to terms with its dependency on one man. 'We lost the match, but it feels like a win', Mohd Azharuddin would say. It would hold true right through his quest to define 50-over cricket.
That definition was born in the 90s, with Tendulkar's blue standing out from the pile as he single-handedly battled the forces from fiery oppositions to a non-performing set of team-mates to nature's wrath. By the end of the century, India would never shift out of this colour-spectrum ever again, right until the time he walked back to the dressing room for the last time in March this year. But this journey that outlasted time was a colourful one literally and figuratively.
In the blue he built a team, brands and cola jingles. But before that, with the rest of the colours on the rainbow scale, Tendulkar first painted the portrait of a soon-to-be cricketing deity.
When he first appeared as a 16-year old in a buttoned white shirt at Gujranwala, one-day cricket wasn't quite what it is now. Yes, Packer had ushered colour into the game. But apart from an odd World Series, it was yet to catch a fire. It did for many Indians, when Tendulkar wore the flaming yellow kit and became an India opener for the very first time.
Auckland 1992, Tendulkar's 67th inning. The willow blazed like the yellow tee during his 49-ball 82. A destroyer was born. A legend soon would be. In 1994, the yellow glittered as India arrived in Colombo in a golden cream jersey. The wunderboy struck his first ever ODI hundred, against an Aussie side draped in blue. Both the colour and results between these two sides soon reversed. But not Tendulkar's knack of accumulating big ones.
As Bangalore, Calcutta, Bombay and Madras changed to Bengaluru, Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai, and as one outrageous print on the India shirt changed to another (from bursting firecrackers to pinstripes), Tendulkar remained the only constant.
If you thought that Tendulkar only accumulated runs in inconsequential matches, then you weren't a fan of the World Cups. The ink blue came first, 1992 Australia. But Tendulkar seemed to prefer the homemade garments at the 1996 edition. As violet, cyan, magenta and indigo found its way around the midriff, Tendulkar feasted impartially from Kenya's green to Lanka's blue.
The team colours stabilised by the mid 2000s and so did Tendulkar. With a tri-colour smear replacing the oddities in the front, Tendulkar helped the flag flutter in South Africa 2003 with pride. But only when the blue bled deeper did Tendulkar give the sponsors a reason to stop creating new jersey designs in 2011. A star, his one and only, had been stitched above the BCCI crest.
Mumbai never saw Tendulkar in colours again. Now, the rest of the world won't. But in the process of lording over a format, he had also hand-held his team through its evolutionary stages jersey colour or otherwise. One-dayers will be paler without him. Quite like the hazy Sharjah frame, minus the blue figure.
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/co...life/1049483/0
Dec 29 2012 2:36PM
Cricket will not be the same without Sachin Tendulkar
Sumit Mukherjee, TNN Dec 29, 2012, 01.15PM IST
Just as the absence of heat makes us feel cold, the absence of controversies in his resume make Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar the coolest of all Indian icons. Ever wondered what goes into the making of a man who has become a legend in his lifetime? There is a lot more to Sachin than just being a run-machine.
His greatness as a batsman lies not in having made more runs than anyone else, but the process he adopted. Sachin's success underlines the fact that talent alone is not enough. It is what you do with it that matters in the final analysis. Not for a second has Sachin let his focus slip. He has always preferred the hard grind to shortcuts. In spite of his cult status and the trimmings (fame, power, wealth) that go with it, Sachin has never let anything interfere with his game.
We may not think twice about criticizing him for just about everything - his batting technique, hairstyle, sartorial sense, nomination to Rajya Sabha and his decision to play on - but no matter what you say, or how much the critics crib, you can never provoke a reaction from the Little Master, who believes in keeping his own counsel.
CHASING HIS DREAMS
They say, a closed mouth gathers no foot. Never has an Indian celebrity spoken so little and yet inspired so much awe as Sachin. Lack of sound bites has not dimmed the media's enthusiasm to relentlessly pursue the man who has always let his bat do the talking.
Not one word out of place, not one step out of turn in his 23-year career in the course of which Sachin has scaled peaks of success that lesser mortals can only dream of.
Yet, he continues to be humble and honest - values that his parents had instilled in him at an early age. If at 39, his brand value remains intact, it is because he continues to inspire millions to dream.
Sachin, of course, started dreaming about playing for the country quite early. When he was picked in the Indian squad for the Pakistan tour in 1989, Sachin was 16, not even old enough to sign the contract papers sent by BCCI. He continues to live his dream even today.
It has been a fascinating journey that has taken him across continents, exposed him to hostile conditions and challenged him to rise to the occasion at every turn. Critics who label him as 'selfish' often lose sight of the fact that Sachin spent his entire teenage life and youth in the service of the nation whose stock in international cricket was not very high.
Sachin's Taurian stubbornness was on view in his very first Test match in Karachi when he stood up to Pakistan's hostile three-pronged pace attack, comprising Imran, Wasim and Waqar, but it was not until Silakot that Sachin earned his stripes.
On a green, fast and bouncy pitch, Sachin was hit on the bridge of his nose by a snorter from Waqar. He, however, refused to go off the field and took fresh guard after staunching the flow of blood with a handkerchief. His steely resolve and ample talent found full expression in the same over when he twice drove Waqar to the cover boundary even as placards saying, "Go home and drink milk" went up in the stands. Seniors in the squad like Kapil, Vengsarkar, Shastri and Srikkanth were all very protective of the teenager on his maiden tour, but that was the day when Sachin came of age and the nation fell in love with him.
PRISONER OF FAME
Today he is the elder statesman in the side, but such is his stature that youngsters half his age hero-worship him. He has had to constantly work on his game to remain one step ahead of bowlers are always on the lookout for the most prized scalp in international cricket.
It will be unfair to dismiss Sachin as an intensely private person who shuns public life. True, like most celebrities, Sachin too is a prisoner of his own fame, but those who have shared time and space with the "master" describe him as a "regular" guy who relaxes by listening to music, prefers seafood, loves to drive fast cars and enjoys the company of his family most. He is used to being mobbed. Just about everyone, his fans and opponents included, wants a piece of the man who had "reminded " the peerless Donald Bradman "of himself".
He has the temperament of a hermit. He is not known to refuse an autograph-seeker or pose for a photograph. Even when he has got a poor umpiring decision, he's never thrown a tantrum. The only occasions when we have seen him a touch agitated is when someone moved across the sight screen. When it is between him and the bowler, he brooks no interference. It was mainly due to his discomfiture at the crease that the ICC has been obliged to raise the height of sight screens at all international venues.
His teammates have marvelled at his genius while batting with him. Rahul Dravid admitted to getting a "weird" feeling when he found spectators starting to clap after being dismissed cheaply. Later he realised that it was in anticipation of the Little Master's arrival at the crease!
This trend continues even today as Sachin prepares to walk into the sunset. Earlier this year, fans at Sydney, where Sachin has a great record, and the Adelaide Oval, Bradman's backyard, admitted to having a lump in their throats as they gave him a standing ovation one final time.
Sachin would be not human if it had not affected him. To his credit, he betrayed no emotion and acknowledged the cheers by gently raising his bat that betrayed him for the first time Down Under.
He sought comfort in his family. A doting father to his two children Sara and Arjun and a loving husband to Anjali, whom he first met - and later courted - at the Mumbai airport while waiting for his luggage to arrive, Sachin is the quintessential family man we all aspire to be.
His father had the biggest influence on him and it was his mother Rajani who sent him back to England, saying his country needed him more for India's World Cup campaign in 1999, when Sachin had air-dashed to Mumbai to attend his father's last rites.
He is excited to see Arjun among Mumbai U-14 probables. Bowling to Arjun in the nets is a ritual that Sachin really enjoys, but he wants to put no pressure on him, realising that the young boy has his hands full living up to a surname that the world of cricket doffs its hat to.
SACHIN THE SLEEPWALKER
Among the other things that Sachin enjoys is go-karting. He simply loves to drive fast. He permits himself a quiet chuckle when he sees the frightened expression on his co-passengers ' faces. He is also a very talented table tennis player and is always up for a game or two with his teammates.
Like most cricketers, Sachin too is superstitious. He is particularly finicky about his bat. His teammates recall that a young Sachin was so worried about his bat not arriving in time that he was found sleepwalking at the team hotel in Faisalabad in 1989. Known to use the heaviest bat (1.51 kg) in the business, Sachin refused to use lighter ones even after he suffered a tennis elbow. During the Eden Test earlier this month, he had his 'lucky' bat as well as an old arm guard 'fixed' before the match and ended up scoring 76, which turned out to be his highest score in the series.
Much before Sachin struck up a friendship with tennis ace Roger Federer, he was a John McEnroe fan. He was just eight years old when he watched McEnroe end Bjorn Borg's five-year reign at the Big W in 1981 on television and then proceeded to copy his idol's look by reining in his mass of curly hair with a hairband and donning wrist bands!
Like all Taurians, Sachin is a loyal friend. He has a very close circle of friends and it is only when he is in their company that the real, fun loving Sachin emerges. His friends say that if he sets his mind on something, you can rest assured that he will achieve it.
They point to the Sydney Test in 2004 when Sachin made an epic 241 without playing a single stroke between thirdman and cover because he had been getting out caught in that region too frequently.
These are feats of a man who, many say, is destiny's child. To say he has enriched the game with his exceptional talent is like thanking the sun for sunshine. Cricket will not be the same when he walks into the sunset.
http://articles.timesofindia.indiati...-pakistan-tour
Having retired from onedayers, Sachin should quit IPL too . Will he do that ?
Kettutu solren rangarajan nambi sir..
http://tamil.oneindia.in/news/2013/0...in-167568.html
Only god can make people forget even marriage.
Another interesting this is - Sachin has scored only 18 centuries in Ranji. Wasim J had scored 30+. Innuma ulagam ranji trophy record ah nambuthu :roll:
Never Imagined that I would be doing Ranji updates here.
Over in Delhi, Mumbai are 42-3 at lunch after 24 overs. Tendulkar batting on 19 off 40 (4x4) Nayar 2 off 43b. Tendulkar got hit on the right hand by Nishant Singh as a shortish ball jumped off the wicket. Took off his gloves and madly shook out the hand, but has generally been solid.
http://www.espncricinfo.com/indian-d...ch/574135.html