Sachin Tendulkar - An appreciation of the god of big things!

Imagine a scenario where Virat Kohli, as seen currently, is moving around in despair, knowing little about what to do. 

Unable to come on top of his woeful form, exacerbated recently by two back-to-back ducks in the IPL, he sets out to seek help. 

He wishes for some advice, and that too, from someone with whom he’s drawn famous comparisons. How might that situation be?

The next thing you know, help arrives in the form of the purest voice the game has ever come to know. 

Putting his arm around the aggrieved batter’s shoulder is none other than the supremo of batting: Sachin Tendulkar. 

But just come to think of it: What might the man described as the “God of cricket” say to Virat? 

Perhaps, “hang on, this too shall pass; actually, I’ve seen worse and come over it!”

We know Virat Kohli’s current situation as being one where he’s in a desperate search of runs. But what we don’t often realise is just how much pressure is riding on him. 

Though the truth is, there was someone who faced the enormity of pressure and, quite frankly, for much longer periods of time than Kohli has spent batting in his career so far. 

And perhaps that is where Sachin Tendulkar’s true glory lies. It transcends his 34,000 plus runs, goes beyond those 100 centuries and is a true testimony to the fact that he was able to play for as long as he did for the most-talked-about nation in the Cricket world. 

Virat Kohli is experiencing a slump for the better part of two cricketing summers. But Sachin carried the hopes and aspirations of an entire country, comprising tens of millions, for countless summers. 

His contemporaries, legendary that they’ve been, think Brian Lara, Ricky Ponting and Jacques Kallis, carried hopes of desperate fans that belonged to populations that were, at best, equivalent to those belonging in a New Delhi, Uttar Pradesh or Mumbai. 

But Sachin was tasked with a lot more. He had so much riding on his shoulders that unfair that it may have been, his countrymen shut down their TVs, some unwisely resorting to breaking them, in the advent of his early departure. 

What unexplainable coolness might he have conducted himself with that he emerged unscathed from the mind-numbing pressure he faced and from both ends? It was not just the opposition but an entire country, and with it, his own team expected one tiny man of sheer flesh and blood to answer everyone’s prayers. 

That he did so, time and again, stroking the most picture-perfect straight drives, pulling the most audacious pulls and executing the trademark square cut for no fewer than 24 years is astonishing. 

It’s one thing - and a great thing, actually - to gather records and uphold the victory of the bat over the ball. But it’s something entirely other to become a yardstick with which others’ greatness and capability are judged. 

More significant to Tendulkar’s successes, and he’s had plenty (even fully to note) - think of the 98 v Pak in the World Cup, amassing 523 runs in the ‘96 World Cup, the magical 169 at Cape Town, the first-ever double hundred in ODI cricket - is the fact that in prior to his retirement, he’d become a paragon of perfection where it came to batting. 

The way he approached certain strokes became the very way to play them. 

Long before he retired, circa 2013, Sir Sunil Gavaskar exclaimed from behind the mic, “any youngster watching, that’s the perfect way to play the straight drive: elbows high up, head perfectly in balance and the body leaning forward!”

What’s incredibly funny, at times, is how certain modern players complain of exhaustion when they themselves participate in excesses without ever being forced with a gun being pointed to their forehead.

But what’s serious business is that Tendulkar seldom took breaks to “rejuvenate” or “recharge batteries” whilst having featured in no fewer than 664 international matches. 

Let that sink in. 

Though what’s a bit mind-boggling is that for the better of his career, Tendulkar batted with a heavier-than-normal bat and even when he scored that silky 111 off just 101 vs the Proteas in the 2011 WC or, for that matter, his most supreme Test knock ever, the 241 at the SCG, he was nursing a tennis elbow. 

His is a career where the ultimate travesty was that he was often cheaply and disgustingly adjudged out when he wasn’t, particularly against the Aussies and under the not-so-cautious eye of Steve Buckner. And yet, that he rarely gave it back or offered colourful language when out of frustration, he could so easily have, underlines his true legend.

In an era where our idols conveniently offer expletives recorded much too easily over the stump mic, engage in verbal battles and are quick to confess that they lost it in the “heat of the moment,” Tendulkar’s legend reminds us that it’s possible to be a true gent despite achieving unfathomable success.

And forget not that above anything, it’s still possible to be simple in a world that largely appears complicated. 

But the fact is, they’ll continue to focus on the unworldly statistics against his name - 11 of his 51 Test hundreds against Australia, 1500+ Test runs vs New Zealand, England, West Indies, Sri Lanka and South Africa, when it’s just as important to reflect on the fact that without principles like humility and great desire to improve, Tendulkar wouldn’t have become a batting demigod.