मैं जिन्दगी का साथ निभाता चला गया

Dada was left out of the Indian squad and whole Bengal was shouting for him. Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni influenced the hairstyle trend of his home state Jharkhand. A sharp turn of ‘Dusra’ by Harbhajan Singh makes whole Punjab crazy, so does the ‘Square Cut’ of Rahul Dravid to Bangluru, and the flamboyant shot of Virendra Sehwag to Delhi. But when Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar gets out, he would get a standing ovation by the crowd anywhere in the world, be it Sydney, London, Johannesburg, Georgetown, even at Lahore and never to talk of India. At that moment anybody can feel a death silence with his mouth wide opened. In the mille, all of a sudden number of students would increase in the colleges (they might have entered five minute late in the classes), work at the offices will again get its momentum, and traffic police will be back again on his duty.(Indian traffic, how pathetic! Everybody has to reach their destination now only).

One thing I believe very strongly, that, cricketers in India have a respectable nation-wide identity. But, there remains a big ‘but’ - though Sourav Ganguly is one of the great faces of Indian Cricket, he still carries an identity of Bengal, so does MSD of Ranchi, Sehwag of Delhi, and Bhajji as punjab-da-puttar. I wonder why Tendulkar is not a marathi manus or a mumbaikar. How any Indian relates with him! This may sound a bit obsessed, but, sometimes I feel as if Tendulkar’s face is that common Indian face which anybody can imagine living in his or her neighborhood.

No commentator has ever mentioned but don’t you think, he is the local boy to all the cities of India. He knows the mood of the pitch of Firozshah Kotla better then Sehwag and Gambhir, crowd of Mohali is more familiar with him than Yuvraj and Harbhajan, and he has played much more international matches at Eden Garden than Saurabh Gangully. Above all he is the one who fought to adorn ‘Tiranga’ on his helmet with all the pride. This is the spirit which has raised him from a regional figure to national figure.

Now, let us not talk about Tendulkar only at national level. In the gentlemen’s game (who seem to be on the verge of extinction), possibly he is the only gentleman left. He is such a gentleman that controversy has kept itself away from his life - both personal and professional. The most contradictory part of his career is this that how a man of blood and flesh can play his shots with so much of perfection, and that too maintaining all the basics and classics of cricket. Cricketers’ claim ‘I came out spotless from the fixing scandals’ but same people accepted Sachin took the burden of the team when he got a sense that the next upcoming game is fixed. These are the reasons why he is near and dear to the entire world. He is not merely a cricket player but a true ambassador of the game.

World Cup is going on, Indian players want to win the world cup for him; Indian fans want this cup so that he can add this missing jewel to his crown. When he gets out, a large number of television sets are turned off and half of the viewers stop watching the match, and beware you may get a heart attack (remember the death of famous journalist Prabhash Joshi). Great Pakistani bowler Wasim Akram once mentioned that India will lose half of its cricket fans when he will retire.

Generations will come and they will talk about him but I am really a proud man to say I have seen him playing; I have seen him dictating the whole world of cricket with generosity; I have seen such a diverse dialectic country like India united in the name of one man.