Feature

From SRT with love

If the great man had sat down to write a letter to his fans, reflecting on his life, it might have read something like this

Rob Steen

20-Nov-2013

My dear fan,

Please forgive me for writing what I have been reliably informed may well be the most extensive group email ever sent. I just wanted to add a few thoughts to what I said at the weekend.

Well, what a last few days that was! All I can say is cor blimey, Gordon Bennett and lord love-a-duck. (You can tell I've been putting myself to sleep by reading my trusty Cockney dictionary - owing to some ancient tribal custom, those nice Yorkshire folk banned me from bringing it over in '92, along with my poster of David Gower.) Not sure how many free chingdi macher malai curries I've been offered, but it's been estimated in the low eight figures.

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The man whom cricket loved back

Tendulkar was the biggest worshipper the game could ever find, and in that lay the foundation of his greatness

Sambit Bal

19-Nov-2013

A day before Sachin Tendulkar's final day in cricket, I was asked by a television channel if there had been a grander farewell for a sportsperson. I offered the standard answer: few sports could beat the combined scale of size and emotion afforded by cricket's fan base, and no other sportsperson has been adored so obsessively for so long by so many people.

But being in attendance for his final day in cricket brought home the more profound part of the truth. Perhaps no sportsman, certainly no cricketer, has loved his sport so obsessively, so absolutely, and for so long as Sachin Tendulkar has done. There were thousands of moist eyes and heavy hearts around the ground, and millions more around the world, but no loss was greater than that of Tendulkar himself.

When great sportsmen leave the stage, more so ones as well loved as Tendulkar, they take part of us with them. But for him, he was leaving his very essence behind. Fans spoke of the emptiness that followed his departure, but can it be greater than the one in Tendulkar's heart? Can we even comprehend it?

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Tendulkar's perfect balance

While the team, the country and the sport changed around him, Tendulkar remained constant

Sharda Ugra

18-Nov-2013

In a wide-ranging, insightful speech at the Pataudi Memorial Lecture the day before the India v West Indies Mumbai Test, Anil Kumble said Sachin Tendulkar had been, "all things to all men".

To the cricketing world, Tendulkar was a batsman for the ages. In 2010, when he made the ESPNcricinfo all-time World XI, Tendulkar said, "It would have been great to walk out with Don Bradman" and to talk to Hobbs and Hutton "about what it was like to play on uncovered wickets".

They would no doubt have a few questions for him too; about the creative dexterity of his strokeplay, the weight of his bat, the data-analysis business, and how on earth he handled the attention. This modern wire-walker with over three generations of team-mates, straddling two millennia and two formats, would have tried to explain how classical fundamentals could always fashion a contemporary response to an ever-changing game.

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Why do we insist on seeing the 'real' Sachin?

You can ask as much as you want for a more "human", more "feelable, touchable" Sachin, but he'll probably not change - and that's a good thing

Rahul Bose

17-Nov-2013

Which is your favourite Sachin? The child who scooter-pillioned from maidan to maidan, playing three matches a day? The boy who stood on a deck set on fire by Waqar and Imran? The son of India who Lata Mangeshkar kisses on the forehead?

My favourite Sachin is the boy who scampers after the ball with the enthusiasm and delight of a cricketer playing his first inter-school match. The delight, the glee at having an open field to run in, a ball to chase, a day to spend under a cloudless sky - that, I believe, is the essence of Sachin.

We all have our favourite, and it is of that favourite we ask: is this the real Sachin? Perhaps one way of finding out is by imagining Tendulkar having played a different sport and then asking ourselves: Would anything change? Would he be different? What if he was a tennis player? What if he had been a tennis contemporary of one of his childhood heroes, John McEnroe?

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The grand piano has left the building

Everybody has a Tendulkar story. Everybody has a hole inside them now that he has gone

Siddhartha Vaidyanathan

16-Nov-2013

The show is over. The final episode has ended. The music has faded. The credits have rolled. Done with the presentation. Done with the speech to trump all farewell speeches. Now all we have are the memories. All we have are the stories.

It's a weird feeling, this. My mind goes back to the day in 1990, when Doordarshan aired the final episode of Mahabharat. For the previous two years, large parts of the country dutifully stopped functioning at 9am every Sunday. Those without television sets walked or cycled to the houses of friends and relatives. Grandparents, parents, uncles, aunts, kids and dogs clustered in living rooms and, for 45 minutes, were rapt in attention. Everything else took a back seat.

Mahabharat is merely an example. Because those were the days when everyone in India watched the same shows. Everyone watched the same ads. Hum Log, Fauji, Vikram aur Betaal, "Washing Powder Nirma", "Vicco Turmeric (nahi cosmetic)", "I'm a Complan Boy"… You could sing the first line of an ad jingle and someone listening would complete it for you, word for word, expression for expression, note for note, tun-tun-ta-tuns included.

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David to a thousand Goliaths

Tendulkar has become a national symbol of optimism and pride but when he bats, we still see him as an underdog

Mark Nicholas

14-Nov-2013

For the past two decades, the fall of the second Indian wicket has created an unparalleled frenzy. This comes first from the crowds, who at once animate a mild sadness at the departure of one man and an unbridled joy at the entrance of another. In homes all around India, families alert one another to the moment and gather close to their television screens.

At the ground itself, the cameramen have switched their focus from the pitch to the Indian dressing room, where a small, strong man is reacting. Still sitting, he pulls on his arm guard and rubs his hands as if drying the palms. Before standing he puts the first batting glove on his right hand and then, as he rises to his feet, he carefully positions a protective helmet upon his head, eases the strap under his chin and tucks almost 3lbs of bat under his left arm. As he begins the walk to the middle he pulls on his right batting glove. He is now ready for the calling that has been his life.

Sachin Tendulkar is 40 years old. He first played for India when he was 16. He made a hundred for India when he was 17 years and 112 days old. He has made 51 Test hundreds and 49 one-day hundreds. He, along with his captain MS Dhoni and a couple of film stars, is the best known person in a land of more than a billion people. But even his recognisable peers do not carry the hopes of that nation each minute of every day. Tendulkar is a victim of himself and so powerful is the impact that adoring followers hyperventilate around him.

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Tendulkar: forever icon

In some ways, we know less about him now than before. The more he has played, the more godlike and inscrutable he has become

Ed Smith

13-Nov-2013

Change is constant, but the pace of change is wildly inconstant. Some lives are played out in the context of continuity and stability; others must adapt to dizzying change and upheaval. Endurance, perseverance and resilience are all relative concepts: standing your ground is much harder when the sands are shifting all around you.

In 1989, when Sachin Tendulkar first took guard for India, cricket was mostly played in whites. The dominant team in the world was West Indies. ODI cricket was emerging but Test cricket firmly remained the game's gold standard. T20 was an accidental form of the game, a solution used only when rain shortened the duration of play. When the England Test team played away from home, it still wore the egg-and-bacon colours of the MCC, a strip invented in the 19th century. India was a passionate cricketing nation but a marginal player within the game's power structure and governance - money and influence lay elsewhere.

Twenty-four years later, as Tendulkar lifts his bat for the last time in Indian colours, survey the contours of the cricketing world today. Many more cricket fans love and understand the white-ball version than the red. India is the game's great superpower; it commands such huge television contracts that every other country wants a slice of the goodies. A whole dynasty, the Australian machine of the 1990s and 2000s, one of sport's greatest empires, has risen and retreated. T20, once a mere entertainment, drives the commercial imperatives of the sport.

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Notes from Kolkata's 'Sachin festival'

Eager administrators, grateful artists, and irate fans: a peek into a one-man industrial complex

Sidharth Monga

12-Nov-2013

Sunday, November 3
  There are few chhaatas out in Kolkata. The rains are over, the sun is not that harsh. The umbrella, that quintessential companion of the bhadralok [gentle folk], has been left at home; the weather is just too good.

This is possibly the best time of the year to be here, but there is a hitch: India continues to pretend Kolkata and regions of the country further east don't need a separate time zone. By a quarter past five, it's pitch dark, although it is not cold yet.  The light falls suddenly, and with a finality. One moment it looks good enough to even play cricket in, the next moment it is dark.

The sun has also begun to set on Sachin Tendulkar's 24-year international career. Tonight he will land in Kolkata, along with other Test specialists from the west - Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane - for his penultimate and 199th Test. The latter of the two is expected to take Tendulkar's place once he retires.

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Those magical fingers

ESPNcricinfo staffers pick their favourite memory of Tendulkar bowling

11-Nov-2013

v West Indies, Kolkata, 1993
Kanishkaa Balachandran : "Lara v Tendulkar" has always been a favourite pre-series billing between the two run machines, but it's a little-known fact that Tendulkar has dismissed Lara four times in one-dayers. The first such instance was perhaps the most spectacular. Tendulkar had just reminded the world that he could never be underestimated as a bowler, delivering a chilling final over against South Africa in the semi-final of the Hero Cup at Eden Gardens. In the final against West Indies, defending 225, the captain Mohammad Azharuddin tossed him the ball when Lara was on 33. Bowling seam-up rather than spin, Tendulkar landed the ball on the off stump. Lara looked to whip it across the line in his signature style but played too early. The off stump went for a spin and the partisan crowd, unnervingly silent till then, cranked up the volume. Tendulkar pumped his fist and sprinted, and there was no looking back for India.
Kanishkaa Balachandran is a senior sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo

v West Indies, Perth, 1991
Devashish Fuloria: I had missed most of the West Indies innings due to a power cut and even though they were 76 for 8 chasing 127, India looked set to lose the match; they just used to. Curtly Ambrose's six off Kapil Dev reiterated that feeling. Ambrose was run out, but West Indies still drew close. With India's seamers having bowled out their quotas, Mohammad Azharuddin opted for Tendulkar to bowl his first with only five runs to defend.

West Indies took five off the first five balls. I remember a close-up shot of Anderson Cummins on the television, with sweat dripping down his temples. Tendulkar, with a thick mop of curls, ran in, the angle of the run-up very similar to Cummins', and got one to swing away and catch the edge of his bat. Azhar, at slip, swooped down on it from close to his boots, and India pulled off a rare tie. It was the first of many times Tendulkar bought India a wicket just when they needed it.
Devashish Fuloria is a sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo

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The first of a hundred

When Tendulkar scored his maiden Test hundred, he was not only dealing with the pressure of saving the match, but also of the tremendous interest surrounding his arrival at the milestone

Ayaz Memon

07-Nov-2013

"Oh the places you'll go! There is fun to be done! There are points to be scored. There are games to be won. And the magical things you can do with that ball will make you the winning-est winner of all."
- Dr Seuss, Oh, The Places You'll Go!

Waiting for something special to unfold can be as thrilling as its arrival. Tension, fraught with anticipation, can both delight and devour: when the magical moment actually comes, it is to be cherished and never forgotten. This could be your first taste of ice-cream, your first kiss, your first car, or in this case, your experience of Sachin Tendulkar's first century.

Casting my mind back almost a quarter century, the prologue now seems as important and eventful as the story of the hundred itself. After protracted turmoil between senior players and the administration, Indian cricket was in makeover mode and the 1990 tour of England was seen, apart from all else, to be a test of new policy.

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