Yeh Dil Maange More!

On a bipolar,roller coaster ride

“How another man, an ageing and fading star, would have loved to have been riding his old chariot. Once untouchable, he had forgotten the most important rule. Always leave them wanting more.”

Lines that have, over the past three years,been earworm to me. Not from a Nolan flick. Not from a Star Wars passage. That is Eddie Jordan previewing the 2010 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, describing Michael Schumacher.

Maybe because I am that guy from the dark side who Indian cricket fans would be used to dissing, maybe because everything had to be connected to cricket, my mind would get reminded of Tendulkar. Not just because of my internal clamour wanting him to go, but wondering when he went past the “leave-me-wanting-more” phase, in my head.

Before you click on the close button, let me tell you this isn’t a Sachin-bashing piece. It isn’t one of those harangues on Sachin v/s the rest of the world, trying to QED to you how X is better than him. It is an outpouring of the emotional cornucopia he’s filled my life with, good, bad and at times, Kohli-cally ugly.

You know that age, of which your memory is neither too hazy nor vivid, a sort of Goldilocks time, and things have just about stuck to your head? That was when I watched Sachin bat first.

I didn’t, before Cricinfo told me, know which game this was. All I remember is my mom telling me this guy with the helmet on, would soon take it off and raise his bat to you. I wait for a bit. I wait for some more. The guy runs himself out. I wail. Cricket, I thought, was unfair- the opposition more so, for not letting him raise his bat.

Sachin gave me umpteen such heart-in-my-mouth memories in the next few years. Oh, those twin hundreds at Sharjah. I was woken up from deep sleep by my excited, teenage cousins, yelling out, “your guy is killing it”. In retrospect, that “my guy” became Tony Greig. If his voice were a drug, boy, was I intoxicated by it! Truth be told, we all, deep in our hearts, owed some part of our Sachin fanaticism at that age toTony’s commentary. Never understated, mostly over the top, Tony was able to enliven the most boring of games.

I do not know if it’s just me or my age then, but, those years, nobody else gave you that enjoy-while-it-lasts feeling that Sachin did. Even if he was bossing around the opposition bowling, he always gave you the feeling that the end was near.

There was a standing ovation in our living room for that 140 in Bristol. It felt like retributive justice for that previous World Cup. Days after father’s death, son hits a hundred and looks up at the sky. Which 8 year old wouldn’t be swayed?! I don’t know about you, but the only other thing I remember from that game is Debashish Mohanty’s spell. Ah, well.

Captaincy happened, first taste of failure. Somewhere in between, Kolkata 2001, to put a finger to it, we started making a move from one-man army to a bunch of inspired individuals. Ganguly was at the centre of it all.

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By then, Sachin was (only) 30. For any human to have played 14 years of International cricket by then is just mind-boggling. If you think of other teenage debutants, Hasan Raza, Tatenda Taibu, etc. and where they ended up, got to give it to him for achieving so much for more than a decade. (Yes, a decade. Not two.)

Rahul Dravid had become a bigger hero for me. A more relatable to sportsman with ordinary talents, who swam against the tide, I thought. That would need an altogether different blog post, so let’s leave it at that.

That Mike Denness test was like a stomach upset. Recovery happened soon. The World Cup 2003 final was where the ride ended for me, I think. Seeds of doubt had been sown by then, about how, unlike the Laras and the Waughs of his generation (and later, the Laxmans and the Dravids), Sachin was not your man for a pressure cooker scenario. India’s pathetic record in ODI finals then did not help matters. There is a school of thought which sticks to the “but, why blame him for a team’s failure?” idea. There might be that element of bias somewhere, but when you look at it with the same lens as a Lara, Gilchrist, Waugh or a Ponting, I’m sorry Sachin, you short sight me. You can show me all the numbers in the world, but I will maintain that he was piggybacked for the last few years of his international career. And there is no argument against such blasphemy in a team sport (even if it’s Sachin, as you say). In any case, aren’t you the guy sharing “Indian economy grew with Sachin” quotes on my facebook feed?

If fandom is blinding your eye to logic and you are going to link me to that guy who tried to prove Tendulkar’s superiority in big-match situations, I have this to tell you: please, don’t bother.

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Early teens, introduction to cricket literature. So much about how individuals take a back seat in team sport. A year ago, Kumble’s bandaged warrior spell before catching his flight had happened. Goal 1 released around then, I think. The coach tells Santiago Munez, “the name on the front is more important than the name on the back”.

Yet, my hero for 8 years, had never meant any of this to me. Yes, he was the one-man in that one-man show. But but, something felt wrong. As his biggest known admirer, Sanjay Manjrekar, put it, in the later years, he became “that elephant in the room nobody wanted to talk about”.

There was something I did not like about him as a sportsman. His refusal to move out of No.4 if the team needed him to. His fetish for personal landmarks, in a team sport, despite plunging the depths in the past three years. His failure to speak up as the widely proclaimed face of cricket in India, when a controversy arose, when the team wasn’t doing well, when we need him the most. During our 0-4 drubbing Down Under, Ravi Ashwin was sent to a press conference in what was his first away tour. Sachin never came, not once. Shy, understated boy you say. When you embrace other aspects of stardom the game provides, (read Ferrari, sponsorship deals, ad shoots), you need to stand up and be counted, I say. And lastly, even after the World Cup win, even after 0-8 happened, his unwillingness to retire. If retiring on a high was what he wanted, in front of his home, his soil and everything else, I can’t think of an Everest higher than the World Cup final to the plateau that is the West Indies test today.

Maybe all this would not have mattered, had men like Kumble and Dravid not been there in the same era. They would jump from a skyscraper for the team. People keep talking about how Dravid and Laxman were unfortunate, overshadowed and the like. Sachin, here’s one thing you lost out on. And, convincingly so.

Trust me, I do not have an arrogant, cocky face, as I write all this. Nobody, not my parents, not my friends, has polarised emotions in me as Sachin has.

You know those movies, where the protagonists are madly in love with each other and then something calamitous happens between them? I felt the same about him. I just couldn’t entertain the thought of rooting for him like before.

I can see the 5 year old me with that mini-MRF bat running towards the 22 year old, ready to wallop left and right. But, like everything else in life, times have changed, Sachin. The five year old kisses you goodbye. The 22 year old, in a quiet corner, is relieved, as your shadow , and not you, I maintain, walks into that sunset.

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