The Tendulkar ticket
Billboards, cakes, tickets - Tendulkar is the theme for everything you do
02-Nov-2013
The ticket for Tendulkar's 199th Test, in Kolkata • Twitter
Kolkata gets ready
If you live in Kolkata and aren't a Tendulkar fan, you might want to take a trip right about now. The Cricket Association of Bengal is planning to put up billboards across the city displaying quotes on Tendulkar by former players like Barry Richards, Kapil Dev and Viv Richards. But if you can't skip town, you could always register your protest by hacking into the five-pound cake that a famous sweet shop in the city has created in Tendulkar's honour. The cake, made of the traditional Bengali sweet sandesh, has a picture of Tendulkar holding a bat.
If you live in Kolkata and aren't a Tendulkar fan, you might want to take a trip right about now. The Cricket Association of Bengal is planning to put up billboards across the city displaying quotes on Tendulkar by former players like Barry Richards, Kapil Dev and Viv Richards. But if you can't skip town, you could always register your protest by hacking into the five-pound cake that a famous sweet shop in the city has created in Tendulkar's honour. The cake, made of the traditional Bengali sweet sandesh, has a picture of Tendulkar holding a bat.
Tendulkar's injury history
To have a long and successful career in sports you need to look after your body very carefully. In the Hindu John Gloster, the former India physio, talks about how Tendulkar bounced back from major injury setbacks because he was very committed to his rehab.
To have a long and successful career in sports you need to look after your body very carefully. In the Hindu John Gloster, the former India physio, talks about how Tendulkar bounced back from major injury setbacks because he was very committed to his rehab.
"Sachin just knuckled down and took on board every little thing the physio and the doctor told him. He was very committed to his rehab. He always saw the big picture."
For the first half of his career, Tendulkar was barely bothered by injury. It was 12 years before he missed his first Test match, and that from an external injury -- a broken toe in Zimbabwe in 2001. At that stage, Tendulkar was the single pillar that propped India's batting up, match after match, series after series. At the 2003 World Cup -- his delightful battering of Shoaib Akhtar and Wasim Akram an abiding memory -- Tendulkar finished top-scorer; it was only later he would reveal the severity of his finger injury. Injections didn't help; at one point, he couldn't hold a tea cup in his left hand, he said.
Leave him alone
In the Indian Express, Harsha Bhogle writes that Tendulkar's farewell series has been turned into a Royal Wedding of sorts.
In the Indian Express, Harsha Bhogle writes that Tendulkar's farewell series has been turned into a Royal Wedding of sorts.
We are all guilty of that because we seek a share of his limelight. It is too good an opportunity for us to let go. Everybody is loving a good retirement.
The old Sachin would have put his phone off the hook, put a 'do not disturb' sign on his door, loaded his favourite music, slipped on his headphones and, by being immersed in the match ahead, would have been lost to the world. He might have talked to his family a bit but he would have talked to his bats more. His Test match always began long before we saw him on the field.
Can he do it again? In Kolkata and in Mumbai? Can he shut himself off from this grand wedding and look upon these as just two more games? Can he now? Can he produce more like that cover drive in Lahli that he would have been proud of at eighteen?
But more important: can we leave him alone to just play cricket, for two more games?