This is like a movie you know will soon end but you just hope for another sub-plot. The last reel has begun to play, you can hear it whirring, you want to stretch the last few minutes…..
This is the Big Tendulkar Movie and it has been playing on our screens longer than any other. But end it must. Another story must be written, another character must light up our life. There is a reason that is the way of the world. Endings seem sad but they are essential and so they are good. Reality must give way to memories at the right time so they remain beautiful.
And Tendulkar, while remaining in our midst, must be a beautiful memory. As the mind drives an increasingly reluctant body, as the bat no longer vanquishes distant lands with impunity, as opponents who didn’t have a hope in hell sense an opportunity, you know this is the right time. We wish him to stay on but we do so out of selfishness. It is our need, our fix. We need a peg to hang our pride on, we need him to lend colour to our spectacle. But he is not the same person. Our rational mind knows it but we banish it. We are wrong.
Tendulkar has been the pivotal figure in my years of watching cricket. He started in 1989, my first tour to England was in 1990. I saw him as a child, as a young man, as a father and in the limited cycle of a sportsman’s life, as a senior citizen. I saw all the phases; each one gave way to another and they were all inevitable. As this one is. The excitement of waiting for Tendulkar to come out, the delayed visits to…well anywhere….while he was batting, the agony when he perished, the debates over whether the umpire was right….all that was a great phase. But there is apprehension now. You still sit on the edge of your seat, not out of impending thrill but out of concern. You only hope this is going to be the day where you once were sure it was. You wonder why more good balls are making their way towards him, why the uneven bounce reserves its spite for him. You bite your lower lip a bit more. And deep down inside, much as you fight with it, you know it is true, you know it is time.
Like all champions Tendulkar has challenged his decline. It knocked on his door, it stared him in the face and he vanquished it. In 2007, he was unhappy. Now, Tendulkar is never unhappy but then he was. He was already a legend, he had been on the road for eighteen years and the whispers were growing louder. He hit eleven test centuries in the next three years, produced one day international scores of 163, 175 and 200 and he won a World Cup medal, the one thing he craved for. Only a rare champion could have generated such a colossal second wind.
But now he is six years older and he is aware that even he can no longer arrest the march of time. The mind, strong as it is, cannot force the eye to continue seeing the ball a micro second earlier; cannot order the feet to dance down the track. Resolve can fight most things but not this. He knows it is time. Maybe it was time a little while ago but Tendulkar wasn’t yet done challenging it.
Now, he gears up for two more. It is a cricket match that we have converted into a festival, a Royal Wedding almost. We are all guilty of that because we seek a share of his limelight. It is too good an opportunity for us to let go. Everybody is loving a good retirement.
The old Sachin would have put his phone off the hook, put a ‘do not disturb’ sign on his door, loaded his favourite music, slipped on his headphones and by being immersed in the match ahead, would have been lost to the world. He might have talked to his family a bit but he would have talked to his bats more. His test match always began long before we saw him on the field.
Can he do it again? In Kolkata and in Mumbai? Can he shut himself from this grand wedding and look upon these as just two more games? Can he now? Can he produce more like that cover drive in Lahli that he would have been proud of at eighteen…….
But more important……can we leave him alone to just play cricket…..for two more games?
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