I believed

Note: I wrote this post on Dec 16th based on Twitter rumours about an impending SRT retirement announcement on Dec 17th. A part announcement was made today. We don’t know the circumstances and what role selectors’ message played before the team was announced for the Pak tour. We don’t know if selectors will pick him against Australia next year. We may or may not see him play again for India, but this is as good a time as any to say thank you.

It was the summer of 1991. The Madhya Pradesh Cricket Association had organized a charity match between Sunil Gavaskar XI and Kapil Dev XI, the proceeds of which were to benefit the local cricketers. I had spent a then princely sum of Rs. 25 to secure a ticket to watch the two stalwarts and a host of India stars play the friendly game. One of the several big names to descend on Nehru Stadium, Indore was Sachin Tendulkar. I have no recollection of the role he played in that game.

However, as I was cycling back to my home in an area then at the edge of the city, I saw several white Ambassador cars hurtling down the National Highway 3. There were no sirens or red lights, so they could not have been official government vehicles. I guessed that these were the players rushing to the newly constructed home of Narendra Hirwani, by then an India regular, and already an Indore legend. I cycled furiously to my house, picked my barely used autograph book and went to the said house, which of course was like a pilgrimage spot for cricket fans in Indore. I jumped with joy to see those white cars parked outside and absolutely no one except a regular vegetable vendor making a stopover out of curiosity.

I will of course never forget the next 30 minutes. Sunil Gavaskar, Kapil Dev, Kiran More, M. Azharuddin, Manoj Prabhakar, Venkatpathy Raju, Navjyot Singh Siddhu, Chetan Sharma, Pravin Amre, Narendra Hirwani, Sanjay Jagdale – they all walked out to get back in those cars. And so did Sachin Tendulkar. Most of them were gracious enough to sign my drenched-with-sweat-after-cycling autograph book, and a few weren’t. The 18 year old boy was initially reluctant but after a few requests, did oblige me.

By then, Sachin had already scored his first test century but of course had not done enough to be seen as the next Sunil Gavaskar as the promises went. That of course was every fan’s big concern even 4 years into SMG retirement. I came back home and showed the autographs to my dad. I told him I managed to get the autograph of the guy who will be our next hero. He looked at the SMG one closely and ignored my comment.

By then, I had already converted into believing the legend of the man child.

—-

It was March 1994. The school exams had just got over and I was up early morning to watch New Zealand score a modest 142 against India. My dad joined me when India was about to bat, and surprisingly we saw Sachin Tendulkar walk out with Ajay Jadeja to open the innings. The next hour and a half marked a key milestone for the 1990s Indian cricket. By the time Matthew Hart got Sachin out c&b for 82 off 49 deliveries in the chase, several fence-sitting Indian fans were finally convinced they had found the right guy to invest their cricketing equity in.

As Sachin walked off the ground, my dad told me it was good I got his autograph already, for it may be impossible to ever get so close to him. He enquired if I had kept my autograph book safely, which of course I had.

An older generation had gotten over the SMG retirement completely. Another generation believed fully in the legend of a world class player.

—-

It was March 2010. I had come back in the wee hours of morning after watching Sachin and Harbhajan Singh sink Deccan Chargers at the DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai. I was rudely woken up, all bleary eyed, by my daughter.

She had watched parts of the IPL game hoping her dad will be live on television. While that hope represented the audacity of childhood, she managed to see some of Sachin’s batting. She wanted me to explain why I had not taken her to the stadium. “I wanted to see Sachin. Promise me you will take me to a cricket match when he plays in Pune”. As I opened my eyes, I realized she was wearing my Mumbai Indians jersey, which I had barely managed to get out of before collapsing in the bed a few hours earlier.

The years had rolled by. A third generation now knew Sachin Tendulkar. A third generation now believed in the legend of a cricketing legend.

—-

For many days, I marveled over the love, affection and faith, which three generations of my household had put in Sachin Tendulkar. Surely my household was not unique. Millions of other households in the country probably had the same experience over time. But importantly, I represent that intermediate link, the generation which was the first to drink the Kool Aid.

The cricketing upbringing for my generation was modest. Yes, many of us have vague memories of the ODI successes during the 1983–85 period. But mostly, the cricketing stories involved humiliation. At home, when West Indies or England or Pakistan visited. Or away, when we went to West Indies or Pakistan or Australia. There were the scars from Sharjah. There were also the turf wars between the two stalwarts SMG and Kapil. It was humiliation, because each defeat was rinse-repeat – outclassed, overshadowed, and bulldozed. Individual moments of brilliance used to come and go away, but there was no sustainable sense of pride for long time periods. As SMG retired and Kapil started to fade, even the individual moments felt like far and few between.

And then came in Sachin.

It wasn’t like his arrival coincided with the general upliftment of India’s cricket skills. For years together, he was the lone warrior. The team composition continued to surprise even the most devoted of the fans. Cricketers unheard of continued to walk in and out of the national team for years. Only 9–10 years in his international career, India got a team which started to gel and show a result orientation which was so sorely missing for many years at a stretch.

—-

So the fascination which my generation held, and I presume still does, with Sachin’s cricket was principally qualitative. We wanted to win, but we knew that it was largely not possible to win the matches or the occasions we yearned for. The Indian cricket meandered aimlessly in the jungles of international cricket like an adventurer losing way in an expedition. We had a torch, a guiding light, but while it was necessary to have one for any hope of coming out of that situation, it was seldom sufficient.

It was always about searching for positives, whatever the results, and the positives almost always involved Sachin. The opposition was wary of him. His wicket was like the Gateway of India – starting where the opposition made inroads. His presence was a psychological boost, a calming down factor, a beacon of hope. Across formats, across countries, across grounds, the chants of SA-CHIN, SACHIN reverberated as a genuine emotional investment in a personal belief.

—-

Eventually, a Jacques Kallis will score more test centuries than Sachin. Or if he does not, Alastair Cook may do so. Even if he does not, he may end up with more test runs than Sachin. There will be many players who will have talent, character, charm and luck – some may have one or more qualities in greater proportion than what Sachin did. This is exactly how evolution works. There may however not be another cricketer, who captures the imagination of multiple generations at one go like Sachin did.

I am sure for me, there will be new cricketing associations. There will be several cricketers of whose success, life and times, I will be a part of. There may however be no one else, who will be a part of me.

In Sachin, I believed.