Wankhede Stadium, South Mumbai, on the 15th of November 2013, was witness to a smorgasbord of emotions; some familiar sights mixed with the never-before-seen; nostalgia and joy clubbed with grief and longing; deafening noise alternating with pin drop silence. It was a proper khichdi of feelings; or to go all out Mumbaiyya – a bhel of emotions.
Let’s start with the familiar. There was a sense of déjà vu when a quarter of the spectators left the stadium after a certain number 4 batsman lost his wicket. It felt like days of yore (the 90s to be precise) when that one wicket would lead to the switching off of television sets and recommencement of work around the country.
Over the last 10 odd years, thanks to a more than able outfit of youngsters who have come to the fore, this over-dependence on that one man had slowly begun to evaporate; for the good of the game of course. That’s not to say his importance in the team was in any way diminished; in fact, with the overwhelming burden of carrying the whole team on his own shoulders lifted, he has been able to play some truly joyous (and many a time, match-winning) cricket in the latter part of his career.
Of course you know who I’m talking about... the one and only Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar. And unless you’ve been living in a tree somewhere in the Amazon jungle, you would also be privy to the fact that this was the last time the Little Master would ever pick up his bat to represent his country.
The Sachin on display today was the same Sachin who raked up all those tens of thousands of runs so effortlessly in the past. Not the ghost of himself who was wearing his jersey over the last one year. It was vintage Tendulkar. There was the trademark straight drive, the paddle sweep, the cover drive... everything that had us eating out of his hands over the last 24 years was back.
And the atmosphere was electrifying! It was like a 4D movie experience with my seat vibrating because of the sound. Every single taken by our hero was cheered on like a World Cup winning run. I didn’t know there were so many different ways to chant Sachin’s name.
But then, at 10.34 am, a deathly silence fell over the Wankhede, like a thick blanket was thrown on top of it from the heavens above.
Sachin, who was in scintillating touch, rocked back in his crease for a Deonarine delivery and played a late cut which went straight to the opposition captain Darrel Sammy who was lurking in the slips. He held onto a sharp catch and before you knew it Sach was making his last, long walk back to the pavilion. For the last time! Ever!
That was the precise moment that the weight of the moment truly hit me! For months together we’ve been reading about Sachin retiring from ODIs, IPL, announcing his retirement from Tests etc. But this was it! It was over!
We just stared in horror as our Hero made his way back.
It was a deafening silence. I had once heard a line in a love song in which the singer sings of “20,000 watts ka sannata” (20,000 watts of silence). Today I actually experienced it. Believe me, in a stadium filled to the brim, with more than 34,000 people inside, you could hear a pin drop.
I imagine this is something close to what J. K. Rowling had imagined when she was writing the chapter in the Goblet of Fire in which the Dementors sweep onto the Quidditch pitch and suck the happiness out of the thousands present in the stands.
Yes, we were slightly disappointed that he didn’t bow out with another triple digit score, especially as he was so tantalisingly close, but it was the sheer thought of not being able to see him come out on the ground with his pads on again that really brought tears to the eyes. And believe me, there was not a single dry eye in the stadium.
Kohli came along, and as is nowadays his wont, immediately started showing off his superlative skills with some excellent boundaries. Nobody cared. Pujara, who has really made a good case for himself as a deserved successor to Dravid in the test line-up, scored an excellent century. Nobody cared. Kohli scored yet another half century. Nobody cared. Dhoni came and went. Nobody cared.
This is the part that I was referring to as something I had never seen before as an Indian cricket fan. No cheering from the crowd when boundaries were being hit? No cheers when an Indian scores a century? For the first time in my life I saw the crowd cheering the fall of Indian wickets! We wanted a collapse! We wanted a comeback from West Indies! We wanted a second innings! We wanted just a few more moments with our hero!
But that was not to be.
It took an excellent innings by another Mumbaikar, Mr. Rohit Sharma, to inject some excitement back into the crowd, with an entertaining century accompanied by the tail.
And I realised... life will go on. It may never be the same, but it will go on nonetheless.
But it’s hard to imagine how! Ever since I was a child the word ‘cricket’ was always associated with Tendulkar. Even though I started a little later than my friends in true fandom (growing up in England where following Beckham or Thierry Henry was way cooler than following Sachin or Lara), I still knew what Sachin meant to the game and the country. Even the blissfully cricket ignorant will be able to at least name Sachin in relation to the sport.
But now there will be no Sachin.
It’s like chocolate chip cookies without milk (Oh, the horror!!!!). Like Pokemon without Pikachu. Like Mani Ratnam without Rahman. Like tennis without Federer (Let’s hope that comes a little later because 2 mighty blows in succession could kill me!).
As I sat there in silence watching Sachin riding off into the sunset I couldn’t shake that feeling of grief. It was akin to the feeling I had when my wonderful grandmother had passed on years ago. Knowing that she would never hold my hand and affectionately call me “Useless Fellow” again.
Memories flashed by in my mind. I’m not the most cricket literate of fans, as in I wouldn’t be able to recall off the top of my mind against whom he scored his 38th century and all, but I do recall random memories from my childhood.
Playing trump cards with my friends. Everyone knew that The trump card was that of Sachin. With every other player we would have to read out his strongest stat. Like Saeed Anwar – highest score, Brett Lee – fastest ball etc. But whoever had The Sachin card would just say his name and everyone would just resign to their fates and begrudgingly hand over all their cards.
I remember the good old nineties when we would attend dinners at some family friend’s place or the other and there would always be a match on in the background on TV and the elders, who love to give their 2 cents, would complain about how inconsistent Ganguly is or how slow Dravid is, how terrible a fielder Srinath is (all unwarranted of course). But I would never hear anything but praise for the Little Master. Match after match he would pull the team out from the chasm of defeat and would claim his man of the match trophy.
It was during the latter part of the nineties when I recall that the people had started to get a little bored of saying that Sachin was their favourite. Come on! Sachin is everyone’s favourite. But he was just too consistently good! It had become cliché to say you were his fan. It was a given. So kids like me started to look for others to call our favourite. I would say Dravid and my best friend would say Ganguly. Which is the truth! I truly love Dravid and someone would probably be a die-hard fan of Kumble or Sourav. But that was always a position jointly held by Tendulkar!
The latter half of the new millennium was the truly frustrating time for the Sachin Fan. Not in terms of form. He was in rollicking form. But in having to deal with moronic cynics who somehow started this balderdash about how Sachin is a selfish player and how none of his great innings ever won the match for the country! It’s so infuriating to hear such nonsense! I just feel like throwing a book of stats at these guys and telling them to read up some hard facts for once!
Anyway, back to the present.
It’s scary and heaartbreaking to acknowledge that the Golden Era of Indian Cricket has finally come to a full stop.
All our beloved heroes, who we have literally grown up with, have hung up their gloves and boots.
Jumbo, Dada, Jammy, Lacchu Bhai have all left behind a vaccuum. With the news of the new BCCI contracts, Zak, Viru and Bhajji are probably on the way too.
But the final blow is the hardest to take. After 24 years of sheer joy given to the country and the world our dear Sachin has said goodbye!
Fortunately the new generation seems to have it in them to match these stalwarts. With Dhoni and Yuvi being the bridge between these two generations, we also have the likes of Kohli, Rohit, Dhawan, Pujara, Bhuvaneshwar, Ashwin who have all shown that they are capable of at least trying to fill in the gaps left behind by the greats. It is quite poignant that it’s in Sachin’s final test series that the boy touted as the next Tendulkar actually rose to the occasion and scored back to back centuries. I hope these boys carry the baton well and with as much dignity as those before them.
I shudder to imagine that my kids would probably not know about the true greatness of Sachin, the same way we have only heard of the greatness of Bradman or even Kapil Dev and Gavaskar.
What will cricket do without Sachin??? More importantly, what will Sachin do without cricket???
We love you Sach!
Thank You... and Farewell...
Adarsh Annapareddy
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