The Surfer

Many Indian cricket fans finally have the opportunity to enjoy the sport afresh. Without the baggage of divinity or perfection. It will not be easy. The questions and comparisons and benchmarks will persist a little. But they will go away. No longer will we have one individual making up for collective confusion. No longer will we have the game within making up for the game without. Those shadows will recede.

In purely sporting terms, however, he is but a shadow of his old self, in which he shone as one of the three or four finest players cricket has produced in its long, languorous history. He is now merely a "good" or "better than average" player. Had he been only 24 and this proficient, he'd be an honest contender for a place on the national team. But he is now so much less good than he once was that, when he plays, the more dispassionate among us can see only an ugly gulf between Sachin's apogee and his plateau.

Marathe (62) could watch television without discomfort till 1999, a period which coincided with the great Indian's peak. He does not seek sympathy. "When all my operations failed, I said to my wife Sucheta that I will accept my handicap and continue to enjoy life. I love cricket, philately and old Hindi music." "One should face reality and introspect. Remember, a white line on a black stone is clear as daylight." Today, he cannot watch Tendulkar's farewell, but will be in front of his television set well before start of play, and hear the commentators describe the key moments.

Tendulkar exuded power and domination. He was a magnificent attacking batsman, who took the game to the bowlers. Although he was a little man, he stood up to the best fast bowlers of the day - South Africa's Allan Donald, Pakistan's Waqar Younis, West Indies's Curtly Ambrose, Australia's Glenn McGrath - hooking, cutting, and driving them with authority. Because he was a diminutive man, his conquest of these fearsome foreigners made Indians marvel even more at his achievements.

I am delighted you are going out bat in hand, that you are not forced out by injury. I remember seeing you in great pain in that first IPL when you were being forced back into rehab. You hated it because everyone else was playing and you couldn't. "I can take the pain but I can't stand this rehab" you had said. I had feared that one day your body would announce to you that it had had enough. It had a right to for you had driven it for twenty five years! I am delighted it is in decent shape for this last game. You still have to run that second run hard even if your legs occasionally remind you they are yours and not Virat Kohli's!

For what it's worth, he seemed to be enjoying it. The madness, the collective adulation, the indescribable hysteria. He looked around and played with exquisite fluency, his each poetic flourish making us achingly aware that we were seeing what we wouldn't, ever again.

Vijay could possibly have played any sport, but chose cricket. He met Coach Kane at a huge barren Railway ground, the only playable area in the district--one that has a decent wicket, and that too, a matted one. "He had a solid defensive technique, and to add to that, he was aggressive," says Kane, who, besides being Maharashtra's junior selector, has been running Kane Cricket Academy at the Railway ground for over 25 years. "Balanced stance, head steady and minimal backlift, he would generate power from a strong forearm," he says, "Just watch his short-arm jab, which is a quick whip at the point of contact."

To my mind, he is the greatest all-round batsman the game has produced. Tendulkar set high standards in his bats­manship as well as in personal behaviour. Yet, res­ponses to his acts of omission and commission--ball-tampering in South Africa, the criticism of his captain declaring when Sachin was on 194, the att­empts to get tax relief on his Ferrari--were always tinged with tolerance, even humour. He had the benefit of clergy. Perhaps writers were wary of being banished from the charmed circle.