Master of the Game

Nothing else really matters today, the 15th of November. There is no significance about the date. It might as well have been the 14th or 16th. All that counted was when Sachin would bat and that date would have automatically become an undeclared national holiday. But the special thing about this holiday was that every other usual holiday pursuit has been suspended, just to watch this Big little man’s final foray. Would it be celebration or mourning? At 74 n.o and the master in fine fettle, it certainly looks like the former, though anything short of a century would be cause for grief.

10.39 AM. And he is gone. The special holiday just turned out to be the shortest, lasting just a fraction of a day. The all-pervading mournful mood is reflected by the shocked silence that has now suddenly enveloped not just the stadium, but all of India and beyond too. The moment and the minutes preceding it would henceforth be beamed a million times, but the actual moment has indeed passed, rendering Sachin to history. Technically, there could be a second innings and hopefully this could therefore be only a threshold to past tense, but going by trends, India is unlikely to bat a second time. Not at least today, my deadline.

As the cameras followed his retreating footsteps from the ground and till his shadow receded behind the shades of the pavilion, one cannot help wondering at the collective obsession that a single man has evoked. Sachin will be seen a lot in future but not surely in this fashion which is why even watery eyes will not fail to file these last few visages in clear tones in the incorruptible archives of memory. From 1989 to 2013, one has got so used to his presence on the field that his absence will display a diluted cricketing landscape, not just in an optical sense. Despite the material milieu and cricket itself topping the commercial menu, Sachin’s batting skill kept us secure in a sentimental world driven by emotions and nostalgia. With the exit of this last of the artists, one can bet on the game to become more of a punters’ paradise than a connoisseurs’ carnival. Sublimity just got out too. Anyway, let us skip the superlatives, all of them having become superfluous in the face of Sachin’s feats.

I cannot help reminiscing about my own obsessive days as a Gavaskar fan since the age of 7 when the original Little Master made a record 774 runs on debut in the Windies in 1971. For the next sixteen years, till 1987 when he quit, still as India’s top scorer in the World Cup, my childhood and youth went the way of many a seasoned Sachin fan of the present – chasing the chosen batting idol without even batting the eyelid. My walk down memory lane, crosses many a landmark, and stops at the penultimate one, Gavaskar’s last test at Bangalore against Pak (March 16, ’87). When he was wrongly given out at 96 on a minefield, having battled alone for hours as often happened in his career, the team’s hopes, my world and that of millions of my peers crashed. Many of us retired from active cricket-watching that day.

And in the World Cup semi final and Gavaskar’s final match on November 5 ‘87 in Mumbai to where I had travelled, when he was bowled for 4, second ball, I stretched my neck, as did the entire crowd and the cameramen, to watch his back vanish into the dressing room for the last time. The deafening silence that followed found its echo only today. While the neck recovered, the heartache lingers. How history repeats, sometimes in an identical manner with almost identical casts!

Sachin helped Indian cricket fans survive Sunil Gavaskar’s exit. Within only two years, the daze, craze and frenzy staged a comeback as yet another diminutive dynamite from Mumbai set about crossing new frontiers and in the process feeding the nation’s insatiable appetitie for an addicting game. Now, the void is back. But with the game getting too instant and competitive, it looks doubtful if there will be any more legends who will be singular objects of adulation for such long periods.

In all, Sachin is likely to remain unbeaten for a quite some time to come!

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