Sachin Tendulkar’s retirement
from ODI’s did not come as a surprise to me. After all, he has not been an
active ODI player for quite some time now. But when I sit down and think about
what we he achieved, my eyes fill with tears of pride. He has so made the
format his own that now it’s possible to think if ODI’s itself is gonna retire
with him. In a country that is obsessed with statistics more than performance,
results more than playing a good game and individual performances celebrated
above the team, he gave us reasons to do both. Talk about numbers while still
amazed by the beauty of his batting, celebrate a victory while watching him
talk about respecting his opponents and most of all, celebrate a Tendulkar
century along with an Indian win. We explored the statistics to understand his
genius. We read articles to understand his brilliance. In short, Sachin
Tendulkar made an average Indian fan, better.
It is a monstrous task to compile ten of his best from a collection of 18000 runs and 49 centuries over 400 matches. I am sure a lot of you would disagree with my list, thinking how did u miss this, how can u miss that types. The list that I have put down here are the ones that simply sprout out of my mind when I saw the news of his retirement from ODI’s. No research & no thinking over, so some numbers may not be accurate. The
Sachin Tendulkar Fan in me came up with it. I had combined a few
performances in one, in a logical way to make room for others. Its Sachin, how
can I not?
10. It’s not even a 50 but on what was once the highest chase in ODI’s, he blasted 40 odd runs in 20 odd balls against Pakistan in the Bangladesh independence Cup final in Dhaka, a rollicking start that culminated
in Saurav Ganguly’s composed 124 and Kanithkar’s penultimate ball finish.
9. He was playing all sorts of role in the team when one day Azharuddin walked up to him and asked if he could open the batting. That offer changed the face of ODI’s forever. He blasted 79 of 41 against New Zealand and a superstar was born.
8. The great man has just lost his father and had to fly midway during the ’99 World Cup to perform the last duties. Most thought that his tournament was over, but the master came back and how! It may be against Kenya but his 143 in the match after his father’s passing was as important as any of his other. It showed how much he cared for his country.
7. He was in indifferent form going into the final of the CB series in 2008 against Australia. But he took the grand finale by a calculated storm that did not decimate the Aussies, but rather destroyed them steadily. The Aussies might have had a stronger chance of getting him out if he was in marauding form. But instead, he chose to play the Anchorman, piling on runs at a fair clip and guiding an inexperienced batting to the
finish. Both the century in the first final and the 91 in the second was a master-class.
6. It may be India's most embarrassing defeats, a forfeit, but
still it was characterized as before and after Sachin. He made 65 out of the 125-8
that India managed in the world cup semifinal in '96 b4 the hostile crowd at Eden Gardens
stopped the match. It
seems like the pitch had two layers, one for Sachin and the other for the rest of the batsmen. Such was the gulf in class.
5. For
all the great batting performances of the little genius, there is one over that
showed how
cool his temperament really is. That final
over in the hero cup semifinal against SA
was one
of my earliest images of him, one that made me a worshipper of him.
How can
a top
order
batsman bowl a nerve wracking final over and win the match for India from a
seemingly
hopeless situation. I was very young and believed only god can do miracles.
I wasn’t wrong.
4.
It was a princess that waited for the right prince to come and
conquer her. Saeed Anwar and Charles Coventry came within sniffing distance of her.
Sehwag was thought to be the man to marry it. But eventually, ODI's first double century was captured
by the king of them all against an attack that had Steyn, Morkel and Ntini, a
handful on any track. It was an innings of textbook perfection and clinical
precision. Sehwag eventually bettered it. But this is first love. Need I say
more?
3. This happened a few weeks before the 200. But fans were
transported to decade before when Sachin single handedly won matches for India.
Set a demanding 350 to win, he scored exactly half the runs and when he got
out, so did India, just like the old times. But that 175 was so breathtaking that even left the Aussies dazzled.
2. Perhaps no other team challenged Australia like how
Saurav's boys did in the last decade and perhaps no other player dominated them
like how Sachin did in the decade before that. The 2 sandstorms that decimated Aussies in Sharjah '98 is part of
cricketing folklore now. You may find this an exaggeration but to me, those 2
innings made him a legend of ODI's.
1. For all the centuries and a double century, this is the
innings that still gives me the goose bumps when I think about it. How did he
do all that? Playing Pakistan in pressure, more so if it’s in a World cup, and
even more if playing for the first time in years. This was no stage for mortals
or good players. The stage was set for only one man and how well he played.
That 98 in the 2003 World cup is the
best innings by Sachin Tendulkar in 23years. One shot stood out. A back foot cover
drive off Wasim Akram in the 10th over still
leaves me speechless, even after watching it hundreds of times.
He defined the format, pulled the crowds to it and single
handedly changed, not just of India’s fortunes, but the future of the game
itself. And we all grew up with him. We were school kids when Sachin was
decimating attacks in the 90’s singlehandedly, so he was the superstar. When we
went to college in the 2000’s a certain Mr. Ganguly so dynamically changed
Indian Cricket that Tendulkar went from one and only superstar to the greatest
batsman of the golden quartet. As we understood the game better, he became a
legend.
Farewell Sachin Tendulkar, albeit from colored clothing. We
hope to see plenty of you in the whites, playing that breath taking straight
drive, that audacious upper cut, that finest of leg glances or that ever so
wonderful back foot cover drive. As a God, please inform the other one that
created you that we said Thanks. We can say that we grew up and lived in the
same time as the God of Cricket. Who else can?
