A ready-to-use tribute for any retiring great

If you've been following international cricket as keenly as I have over the last few months -- and I have been following all matches involving India, and therefore Sri Lanka, very closely indeed -- then you are well aware of a crippling problem that is facing the sport.

Yes, readers, I am referring to the fact that match after match our cricketers are not getting any younger. Indeed, as each year goes by all of them, except one Pakistani, are ageing commensurately. Just five years ago Mahendra Singh Dhoni was a strapping young lad of 25. But today, alas, he is 30 years old.

There is no way cricket can stop or reverse this trend. These players will keep getting older. And this poses a nearly insurmountable challenge for cricket columnists, cricket bloggers, cricket tweeters, cricket podcasters, Indians and other well-informed cricketing experts everywhere.

Namely: how do we keep writing 3000-word essays in tribute to each of these bloody fellows as so many of them retire one by one?

This is an especially daunting challenge for Indian journalists. The Indian cricket team is on the verge of bidding farewell to two titans of the sport: Sachin Tendulkar and VVS Laxman. Writers and columnists must be dreading the prospect. Just recently they spent reams of newspaper and thousands of words gushing forth about that other great name to depart from the sport after having thanklessly toiled for years: Mazhar Majeed.

What if Laxman and Tendulkar were to retire within days, or even hours, of each other? How will the tribute-writers cope? What if Rahul Dravid, private and low profile as he is, also retires around the same time? And Virender Sehwag?

Pandemonium in the profile-writing department.

Relax, my journalistic brethren! This writer is prepared to do the heavy lifting for you. In order to lighten your burdens I have crafted a most versatile generic tribute piece that you can use for almost any Indian cricketer. All you need to do is insert the correct name and, optionally, tweak some of the scores and place names. I say optionally because the vast majority of your readers hardly remember things that happened in places like Bulawayo or Sabina Park. The experts who are aware of these minutiae, on the other hand, will be too boastful and self-important to read tributes written by other people.

My strategy is foolproof.

Please find my one-size-fits-all retirement tribute below. For the purpose of a place-holder I have used a fictional name.

You may thank me in the form of cash, or chocolate-enrobed coconut confections such as Bounty.

I first met Pashmina Taramasalata in person in a hot, damp, stifling sauna in Udaipur. It was on the evening before the third day of the fourth Test of the 11th English tour of India. Taramasalata had only just been picked for his debut Test match for India three weeks ago. But already you could sense, when the water vapour intermittently cleared, that this was a gifted athlete.

Of course back in those days he had not yet become the hero of millions, or indeed the millionaire, that he is today. Sure, he was a rising star on the domestic circuit: Taramasalata had been picked after an astonishing streak of results for Bahawalpur in the Ranji, Deodhar, Santosh, Federation and SK Karanjia Memorial trophies. It was an unprecedented record for a gangly, intense but awkward 19-year-old from a sleepy suburb of Bangalore.

It is by now cricketing folklore that Taramasalata had never really wanted to become a cricketer. In fact, for the first dozen years or so of his life -- excluding infancy when he was unexceptional -- the young Taramasalata wanted nothing more than to become an international football coach. To this day his schoolmates remember him running up and down, shouting encouragement and strategies, dressed in a long trenchcoat, during Moral Science class.

But then, as is so often the case with the great players, providence appeared in the form of the school's cricket coach: Sharadashram Achrekarkant. On numerous occasions Achrekarkant has recounted the story of how he spotted the Medium Master's talent: "I was overseeing cricket practice one afternoon after school when I saw this boy standing by the side of the empty football pitch, waving frantically at nobody. He was practising how to make strategic substitutions. I was impressed by his commitment, his physical fitness, radiant personality and energy, and asked him if he wanted to have a go in the nets. He refused but agreed to play a little cricket instead."

Cricket would never be the same again.

By the time he debuted in 1994, Taramasalata was already an almost perfectly formed professional batsman. He had great strokes on both sides of the wicket, a superlative leave outside leg stump, was utterly fearless of any bowler on any pitch in Chennai, and was a livewire in the field.

What undid Taramasalata in those first few years, however, was youthful impetuousness. His need to score runs quickly consumed him completely. One slow over and you would see him prancing around the pitch grumbling to himself. What was he grumbling? "Mostly abuse," he told me during an interview.

All that changed in Bulawayo in 1997. In fact, many people remember the exact moment when Taramasalata transformed into the Medium Master. In the second session of the fourth day of the third session of the third Test Match of the eighth day against South Africa, Taramasalata was looking to slog. He had scratched around all day for a testy 24 and had clearly lost patience. And then Navjot Singh Sidhu walked up to him and said something. Both of them laughed. Taramasalata would amass 600 runs in the next seven innings, without being dismissed even once.

Sidhu later revealed in his biography that he had merely asked Pashmina to relax. Even if both of them got out quickly, Sidhu had quipped, they could have a drink and spend some time getting to know each other. "But after that he never got out only, till I retired," Sidhu recalled.

Over the next 15 years Taramasalata dominated cricket in his own unique way. He scored everywhere, against everybody. Not once in his entire career has he been pulled up for disciplinary problems, unsporting behaviour or dissent. This is remarkable given the prevalence of Australian umpires.

The cricket World Cup victory in 2011 was a much delayed but eminently worthy reward for this man's persistence. For the last two decades he has unfailingly lived up to the expectations of a nation whose praise and criticism can be equally crippling. He has become fabulously wealthy. He has two wonderful children who will struggle to live up to his name, and in Deepalika a patient, understanding and, most importantly, buxom wife with wonderful skin.

While we are sad to see his era come to an end, all cricket fans will be pleased to see that he leaves on a high. Taramasalta has never been in better form in his entire life.

I leave you with my favourite Taramasalata moment. After the astonishing last-ball victory against Sri Lanka in Sabina Park in 2004, I asked Pashmina Taramasalata how he kept going. How, with one broken arm, a punctured lung, carpal tunnel syndrome and severe chunky dandruff did he manage to keep chasing a target of 64 runs in 27 balls? Did he not ever feel like giving up?

"No Sidin," the great Pashmina Taramasalata told me, "I am not French."

What a man.