Sachin Tendulkar may have inspired others to write poetry but he batted in robust prose. Not for him the tenderness and fragility of the poet, the excitement of a leaf fluttering in a gentle breeze. No. Tendulkar is about a plantation standing up to the typhoon, the skyscraper that stands tall, the cannon that booms. Solid. Robust. Focused. The last word is the key. He loves the game deeply but without the eccentricities of the romantic. There is a match to be won at all times.Sachin Tendulkar is an extraordinary cricketer whose durability and skill have for many ears uplifted his country’s cricket team. Now he holds most of the game’s most prized batting record. It has been a magnificent, underestimated achievement. Ever since he first appeared as precocious teenager Tendulkar has known nothing except exorbitant expectations.
Sachin Tendulkar has been playing top-class cricket for 21 years and he's still producing blistering innings, still looking hungry, still demolishing attacks, still a prized wicket, still a proud competitor. He has not merely been around for two decades. From his first outing to his most recent effort, a stunning 214 in Banglore, he has been a great no the greatest batsman.
Remarkably, Tendulkar has managed to retain his health and reputation through it all. His body might be complaining but his spirit endures and he seems immune to stress and sickness. Throughout there has been something in Tendulkar that set him apart. Partly it is the purity of his style. From the outset he could bat in the classical way. Contemporaries insist that he was not taught the game; it came from within, like an underground spring. From the outset it has merely been a matter of correcting the bad habits that creep in the moment the brain sleeps. His strokes are played with a bat somehow broader and straighter than any other, and his feet seem to move effortlessly into position.
But it goes beyond facts and figures, style, sportsmanship, or else others could join him in his acclaim. Tendulkar has been the hero his country needed. Indians spend billions of dollars every year trying to lighten their skins. Advertisements for the appropriate creams are shown between overs. India knows that its film stars have not crossed cultural lines. Booker prize winners cannot inspire a nation half as well as the sight of a demonstrably Asian boy repeatedly cracking feared bowling around. It was his combination of aggression and productivity that defined him. And he has been untarnished by scandal.For 19 years Tendulkar has inspired his countrymen. Supporters cherish his introductory masterpieces, daring and almost cheeky, his hundreds scored in adversity, and his later more restrained efforts. It is idiotic to expect a man to be the same at 36 as at 16. I started watching cricket when I was like 4 years old. From that day till today I've never missed a Sachin's Innings. I grew up watching him play and I still love watching him play. He truly is a cricketing Idol to me. He's more than a Role Model.
For me it has always been a privilege to watch Tendulkar bat. His recent 214 vs the Oz was no short of brilliance. It was a perfectly composed and crafted innings. He made the Oz attack look as fearsome as a toilet-roll-commercial puppy.
Tendulkar's feats are prodigious. He has scored as many runs overseas as in his backyard, has flogged Brett Lee at his fastest and Shane Warne at his most obtuse, has flourished against swing and cut, prospered in damp and dry. Nor can his record be taken for granted. Batsmen exist primarily to score runs. It is a damnably difficult task made to look easy by a handful of expert practitioners. Others have promised and fallen back, undone by the demands, unable to meet the moment. Tendulkar has kept going, on his toes, seeking runs in his twinkling way.But it has not only been about runs. Along the way Tendulkar has provided an unsurpassed blend of the sublime and the precise. In him the technical and the natural sit side by side, friends not enemies, allies deep in conversation. Romantics talk about those early morning trips to Shivaji Park, and the child eager to erect the nets and anxious to bat till someone took his wicket. They want to believe that toil alone can produce that straight drive and a bat so broad that periodically it is measured. But it was not like that.From the start the lad had an uncanny way of executing his strokes perfectly. His boyhood coaches insist that their role was to ensure that he remained unspoilt. There was no apprenticeship. Tendulkar was born to bat.
Sachin's emotions, are the common Indian's emotions. When he took those three runs to reach 17,000, Sunil Gavaskar rightly said, those runs are as much as the people's as Sachin's. Indeed, I felt so much more relaxed after he reached that awesome landmark.
A hundred for Sachin, is a hundred for the nation and an insult to him is an insult to the nation.
So what if we lost the Kohinoor? No one can take away Sachin Tendulkar from us. Not even God.
There are Legends and then there's "Sachin Tendulkar"
SACHIN is truly INDIA's PROUDEST POSSESSION
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