Anurag Kumar
This was India in the early 1970s – a still-young nation in the grips of the Licence Raj, where slogans of “garibi hatao” and “unity in diversity” reverberated out, two years before the imposition of Emergency and ten years before the Indian cricket team would be the toast of the cricketing world at Lord’s.
In the latter part of the decade that followed, the country slowly began to learn about Sachin, who was previously unknown. First, when, as a 14-year-old, he started getting noticed in the Mumbai maidans for his voracious appetite for runs; then when he broke into the Indian team at the cusp of 16, after wowing the stalwarts of the time at a specially organised nets session; and eventually in 1989, when he danced down the track to a gyrating Abdul Qadir in Peshawar, and brushed aside a bloody nose to stand up to Waqar Younis in Sialkot.
For the newly globalized India of the 1990s, Sachin represented a generation waiting to decompress. A generation of which he may have been a product, but which he would also define. Consequently, for the next two decades, as the nation received new services, facilities, beverages, automobiles, communications networks, and television networks, and was ravaged by communal violence and political unrest, Sachin was the only constant. His reputation grew and endured to the extent that the personal histories of an entire population became intricately intertwined with his achievements.
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We recall where we were when he wore an India jersey for the first time as a child with curly hair. As we recall what we were doing when he first opened the batting in a brisk morning one-day match in Auckland in 1994. When he defeated Australia in the “Desert Storm” at Sharjah in 1998. When he fought alone against Pakistan in Chennai and narrowly lost. In 2004, he scored 241 runs, all on the on-side, in Sydney. When, 21 years into his career, he stretched the boundaries of the one-day format with a double century in Gwalior. When he was carried on the shoulders of his teammates at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai after India won the 2011 World Cup. And when, at age 40, he sobbed in front of a stand bearing his name as he bid farewell to a sport he had transformed in his own image, he was on his home field.
For significant portions of India who were children in the 1980s, young adults in the 1990s, young careerists in the 2000s, and managers in the 2010s, a Tendulkar memory was interwoven with our own highs and lows, romances and heartbreaks, promotions and passovers.
In the past decade, it has been difficult to imagine Sachin without cricket, more difficult to imagine cricket without Sachin, and perhaps most difficult to accept that his intellect no longer enlivens our lives.
As a cricket journalist for the first half of my career, I had rare opportunities to gain insight into Sachin’s intellect and character. In 2002, for instance, Sachin pulled me aside at the Barbados airport with twinkling eyes to explain that the proper manner to greet people in the Caribbean was with a fist on the heart. In Lahore, Pakistan, during the 2004 Pakistan tour, Sachin was trailing me 19-16 in a table-tennis doubles match. As I was preparing my next serve, my ambidextrous opponent switched the paddle from his right hand to his left, finished the match with five fierce smashes, and flashed a mischievous grin. During a flight between Tests, Sachin, who was playing Snake on his Nokia phone two seats away, abruptly tugged on my shirt and handed me his phone – the screen was black, and the snake had no more food.
These instances provided insight into an otherwise reserved individual’s affection for people and traditions, his inherent mischievousness, and his competitive drive.
Sachin was a phenomenal cricketer, but he was not flawless, nor can anyone be. He committed errors and fallacies, as do all humans. In conflicts with the Indian board or within the team, it could be said that he did not always advocate for the best interests of the team as a whole. Between the springs of 2011 and 2012, his pursuit of the 100th international century dominated his batting. That he did not always manage the endgame with the same ease as VVS Laxman, MS Dhoni, Virat Kohli, and now Rishabh Pant. In contrast to the all-powerful cricketing deity we like to remember him as, Sachin usually succeeded and occasionally failed.
But rather than diminishing what Sachin meant to an Indian generation that so passionately identified with him, these relative flaws added an essential dimension.
With Sachin’s 50th birthday approaching, the query is not what the landmark means to him, but what it means to us. To begin with, it indicates that we have all aged, as the hair at the temples is receding and the sideburns are graying. The world of limitless possibilities that we once inhabited is now in the past. And that we, the products of that shared time and space, may be divided by class, caste, ideology, or politics, but one thing will always unite us: a cricketer whose bat striking the ball was the soundtrack to our coming of age.
