Sachin Tendulkar- The Story you know, The Patronage you don’t
With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, a young 16 year old boy standing at just over five and a half feet tall made his debut for India. The test series was going on in Pakistan, and India had somehow managed to draw the first three tests. They needed to save the fourth test , because a loss here would mean not only losing the match but also the series.On the last day of the fourth test in Sialkot, India had to bat all day to ensure that the match is not taken away by our arch rivals. The pitch was so green that the batsman had only two choices, either sacrifice your body or your wicket.With the likes of Waqar Younis, Wasim Akram and Imran Khan bowling, it was difficult even to defend the ball, leave alone scoring runs. Navjot Singh Sidhu believed it was better to get out rather than hurting oneself. While he watched the other batsmen getting out on the other end, the score was 38–4.Azharuddin had just got out and Ravi Shastri left without hurting the scoreboard.In walked Sachin Tendulkar, and was welcomed by a bouncer by Waqar that left a fracture on his nose and blood everywhere. Sidhu advised him to leave the ground immediately, the physiotherapist advised him the same and was about to call the stretcher when Sachin told “Main Khelega”. Tendulkar hit the next ball showing the full face of the bat for a boundary. This amazed Sidhu and he understood that this player was not just another player, he was fearless , he would not back down and he was something the world had not seen before. Sachin scored 57 in the test while Sidhu went on to score 97 to help India draw the series.
The Cricketing world recognised Tendulkar’s excellence and his masterstrokes in batsmanship. It wasn’t that the Indians had not seen a great batsman before, with the likes of Gavaskar, Viswanath, Hazare having played the game before him, but their batsmanship was concerned with technique and artistry while Sachin added power and dominance to it.The cricketing world had seen the bowlers taking the game to the batsman, but with this man’s arrival, it was he who took the game to the bowlers. This was the rise of a new revolution in world cricket while there was a revolution going on in India in parallel.
In 1989 India, cricket was played against a background of growing social conflict, the Mandal Commission report had sparked clashes between different castes. In 1991, the opening out of the Indian economy had provoked fears of rising inequality and joblessness among the people. There was an insurgency in Kashmir and political tensions with Pakistan were growing.The last decade before the millennium saw thousands die in riots, bombings etc all linked to rivalries in religious groupings.This was accompanied by political instability, India saw 7 Prime Ministers between 1989 and 1998. In this atmosphere of fear, suspicion and violence, Sachin Tendulkar scored his first hundreds.
His skills and versatility made millions in India forget their insecurities and fears temporarily and together cheer for their new hero. When the foreign world economies were growing rapidly, Tendulkar stood up to the best fast bowlers- Allan Donald, Waqar Younis, Curtly Ambrose, Glen McGrath, driving, pulling and cutting them with with dominance and authority.His conquest of these fearsome foreigners being a diminutive man himself brought a new role model for India, which was competing with the foreign economies. Even during such social conflicts, Tendulkar was cheered by Brahmins and Dalits alike. Tendulkar brought solace and consolation to a divided nation by his sheer batsmanship, and what made people cling to him even more was the lack of role models elsewhere. Politicians were corrupt, Film Stars were exhibitionist and Entrepreneurs were self serving.
Purity in India is very close to divinity. Tendulkar stayed away from controversies, mentored young players, did not involve in sledging, was always humble and respectful, this understated personality appealed to the common masses. Tendulkar was the hope of a new India, when a man came from an unsuccessful day at work, or when thousands of men were tired of their unsuccessful attempts at getting jobs or when women struggled to get basic necessities to run their day to day lives, it was Tendulkar’s achievements that would fill them up with joy and pride.” They would switch on the TV and would switch off their lives”, a newspaper daily rightly said. They saw their own success in his success, in the success of a nation where one man made cricket a religion.
Tendulkar went on to become the leading run scorer in the game, but he was special to us not for the records but the important part he played in our lives, for being the hero of our survival and for being the idol in our successes. When Sachin battled in the field, we all battled alongside with him, each of us in our own game, and when he won, each of us won along with him. Every father wanted his child to be as successful as him, every mother wanted her child to be a good human like him. That was the stature of Sachin Tendulkar in India, that was his patronage, of a man who tried, who tried very hard to take a billion hopes on his shoulders.
For a man who could unite millions of diversified people, be it from the North or South, a Brahmin or a Dalit, he was our hero, the greatest icon of the game. He might not be the greatest cricketer of all time, maybe not even the greatest cricketer of his own generation, for there are likes of Warne and Kallis but he will always be the greatest ambassador of the game , for records are meant to be broken ; there are many who live their dream, but only Sachin who lived a dream of not only himself but of a billion others. He will always be the man who we look upto in times of struggle and despair, for that is when we remember god , and believe just like every time he would give us, hope. The hope to fight, the hope to get up and say “Main Khelega”.
Views are completely personal, some excerpts have been taken from some interviews of cricketers, news articles and Ramchandra Guha’s A Corner of a Foreign Field.
