When I started writing a blog for this website, never did I think that I will write one on cricket, followed by another one on cricket. India, after all, is a huge country with several issues that merit a discussion every day. This month, for example, we had the controversial Railway budget (check up some sites if you already haven’t to get an idea of the mess that followed); the budget, the big one, which had the critics frowning as it usually does; and of course, the emergence of the young Samajwadi Party politician Akhilesh Yadav, who masterminded his party’s triumph in the Uttar Pradesh elections. Many big stories, you would say. And yes, you are right.
Except that there is this one story that is the biggest, and not because it can make India progress at a faster pace or any such thing – it cannot – but since it happened to be a moment millions of India’s cricket-hungry fans had been waiting for. For the last one year, Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar was being expected to score his hundredth international hundred. That Sachin did, against a tiny team like Bangladesh who, incidentally, beat us that day. To many critics, the slow pace at which Sachin accumulated his runs resulted in a victory for the minnows. That is absolutely correct: unless, as the great man himself suggested, the ball was not coming on to the bat as it should have, leading to difficulties in scoring those runs.
At the risk of antagonizing many hardcore Sachin fans, I must confess that I find such a suggestion hard to believe. Check out the bat-stats of many other guys who batted in the match, and you will know why. Having said that, let us view this century with a little bit of kindness. Forget the fact that Sachin’s latest record is as unbeatable as Sir Donald Bradman’s unsurpassable average in test cricket – and hence, he wanted the record very badly, no matter what he says – the fact remains that the media has been after him for the last one year. An exceptionally talented human being he certainly is; yet, at the end of the day, dealing with the daily reminder of having to score his hundredth century isn’t easy. This, even if he is Sachin Tendulkar.
Through their columns and articles, many journalists had been advising him to retire right away. That they had been dodging the question of discussing an immediate alternative is, of course, natural. What was also noticeable in the recent past is that, while Sachin wasn’t that unstoppable run-making machine one knows so well, his batting while he lasted was very fluent. Some way or the other, he managed to get himself out: exactly the sort of thing that happens when things do not go your way, not matter how hard you try.
While playing against Bangladesh, therefore, he slowed down as he neared that magical mark. He didn’t want to get out, go back to the pavilion, sit on a chair and stare at the emptiness around him, wondering when his hundredth hundred will finally materialize. Once, he attempted to take a non-existent single. He even played out a maiden over, a crime in the game’s shorter version today. It was clear that he wanted to score ‘the’ ton. What was equally evident was that he wanted to get rid of the pressure: the pressure created by the nation’s fans who had been going to the stadiums with placards, asking him to get that special one. Then, there was the media, which wanted to expedite his retirement as if his playing for India was having an adverse impact on the readership of newspapers and the TRPs of television channels.
As he comes close to completing his 39th birthday, it is only fair to believe that Sachin won’t be playing international cricket for very long. What one must add, however, is that we should stopping blaming the man for our defeat against Bangladesh. For, while he did act selfishly, his desperation had a lot to do with the fact that we wouldn’t have let him relax till he got there.
That, he has. Now, can we move on to the next match please?
