Thank you for the Music

Dear Sachin, It feels strange to address you in this manner but it would be decidedly odder to call you Mr Tendulkar, seeing that I have known you now for the better part of 34 years, ever since your two ball duck in your first ODI against Pakistan but let’s pass lightly over that. Happy Birthday. You turn fifty today and that’s a landmark, an age when one turns back the clock to reminisce; to assess one’s life, one’s body of work. Suffice it to say that you have a fairly impressive resume to look back upon. Curiously, it took me a few years to fall in love with you. It was during the Hero cup in 1993, a full four years after the world had hailed the wunderkind. You weren’t having the best time with the bat and then you literally pulled the ball from Azharuddin’s grasp and bowled that last over against SA in the semis and defended six… I watched you clean bowl Brian Lara in the finals on a tiny television set by the beach. It was Arvind’s bachelor party and you and Anil Kumble made it special. We were counting wickets but not our drinks and it was a wonderful evening, what we remember of it. And after that, there was no looking back for me. There had been Vishwanath and then Richards, the original King. And now there was Tendulkar and I knew that there would be no more after you. There’s lots more that I remember, like images in a slide show. Everything, in fact, because I watched- everything. When you batted, my world stopped and there was only you and everything else was a distraction. There was the cover drive and the bowler’s back drive played with that heavy bat, a stroke that you made your own. The insouciant dance down the track to hit Warne and Murali to all parts. The hook, brought out only to put the bully McGrath in his place. And then, when the back gave out and the body began to age, the upper cut and that delightful lap off the spinner. Not so much stepping out then but always the feet in position, eternally so. I always wonder what you would have done to the T20 format if you were ten years younger when it began. Rewritten the code, I suppose, in a way that only you could have. I wonder - but I am not saddened that you didn’t get that opportunity. Every card cannot fall our way now, can it. After all, the Lord gave us 2011 when I thought that you would go without a World Cup and for that, I am grateful beyond words. There was pain, along the way- quite a lot of it, as one would expect, along a twenty four year journey. 136 against Pakistan, 175 in the ODI against Australia,97 at Bridgetown against the West Indies- all gut wrenching losses. And then the ache in the stomach when you, inevitably, failed on occasion, showing that you were human. I daresay you analysed each dismissal because you are, first and always, a perfectionist, a peerless craftsman who would not accept an error. Think of me, though, without any of your skill but all of your agony and more,that horrible sinking feeling when you were out and then lying awake at night and thinking what if.. and why did he.. Surely I have suffered more. Gladly so. Because when you gave joy, as you more often than not did, with that mostly impregnable bat of yours, I needed no food nor drink nor anything else. I was sated. By 2010, you had been playing for twenty years and we had both aged. You were 37 and could still summon every ounce of your genius to have your best year and to make the first ODI double hundred. “ The first man to do it is the Superman from India”, thundered Ravi Shastri on commentary. And who was I to disagree! And, quick as a heartbeat, it seemed, the end was nigh. 24 years had passed by in a blur, as was that last innings at your beloved Wankhede. I so desperately wanted to imprint every run you made in my mind- you made 74 beautiful ones- but I only remember the tears. Yours, shed with dignity as you walked one final time to the middle, alone, when the game was done, to pay obeisance to those 22 yards and mine, rolling relentlessly, bitterly down my cheeks in rivulets and the rest of my family too tactful to even mention them. There’s this chap called Kohli who took your place at number 4 when you vacated that slot and, by all accounts, he can bat a bit but he isn’t you and so….well, it just isn’t the same. But we must move on and, inevitably enough, I have. And now you’re turning fifty. There’s a few extra pounds around the midriff. There’s another Tendulkar wearing a blue jersey and bowling left arm brisk for Mumbai Indians. It’s all good. And as for me, I write this now to say- thank you. You lit up two decades of my life with your incandescent batting and your grace and integrity at all times and for that I am eternally in your debt. You were the first cricketer my son adored and one of my great life memories will be the two of us jumping around like madmen in our living room, celebrating your hundredth hundred. Much happiness, always. May the Wankhede- and, indeed, every Indian stadium- continue to echo with the electric cries of “Sachinnnnn, Sachinnnn”…. Much love, Ajay