Sachin 'God' Tendulkar: Divorces Cricket

I was born in Sydney on 27^th December 1959 in an Indian household. It was a weird day.

Y’day was 10^th October 2013. It was a really weird day.

Rachel, my wife, divorced me. We were married for 24 years.

Sachin Tendulkar divorced Cricket. They were married for 24 years.

You must have noticed the peculiar similarity in our divorces. That’s where you’re wrong.

My divorce doesn’t come close to Sachin R. Tendulkar’s. He is the man with the greatest love story, ever. Mine, not so.

Let’s go back a little. Let’s go back to 13^th August 1976. I was 17 years old. And I didn’t like Cricket.

It was almost mid-night, but I didn’t feel like going back home. I entered this swanky sports bar in Central Sydney. I sat down at the bar, on a tall bar stool. I confidently ordered beer hoping bartender wouldn’t ID me. She didn’t.

England was playing West Indies in a Test match, in London. The 10-hour time difference & rare ‘live’ international telecast meant it played on this obese Sony television right above my head.

Cricket didn’t interest me tiniest bit. And there weren’t any gorgeous girls. Boredom led to 5 pints down my throat within half hour. A record for me till date. I ordered another one. Bartender narrowed her eyes implying that this is the last one. Damn. I smiled & gave her the thumbs up.

As I knew it was my last, I decided to go slow. I finally noticed the crowd of fat beer-bellied people all around me were going nuts. I glanced at the TV. I saw this 24-year-old giant of a man clubbing the leather all over the park. He was butchering the bowlers but the elegance & ease he did it with was supernatural.

Someone placed his big ass on the stool next to me. That someone said something to me that changed my life.

He said looking coolly at the screen “There’s only one. He’s the one” pointing at the elegant butcher inside the screen. “He’s the only one who’s making love, my son…………rest of us are just having sex”.

The man inside the screen was Sir Vivian Richards. He went on to score 291 that day.

I went on to become a cricket journalist. Vivian Richards was my driving force. The man who made love to Cricket.  

12 years later. It was 1989. Richards was in the twilight of his career. I wondered what will motivate me to write once he retires. You can call me a narcissistic douchebag but I firmly believe that’s why God sent Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar.

It was still 1989. He was 16 years old. Pakistan’s Abdul Qadir was at his peak. Sachin butchered him for 28 in an over, including 4 towering sixes. It kicked-off the colossal love story between Sachin Tendulkar & Cricket.

At 17, Sachin smashed 68 & 119 against England in Manchester, England. At 18, he belted 148 not out against Australia at SCG, Australia. A month later scored a fearless 114 on a menacing WACA pitch.

It was a love story without the fear of losing. It was the love story that made Cricket a religion in India. And it made Tendulkar God.

In November 1993, with South Africa needing 6 runs to win, he grabbed the ball & gave away just 3.

In the next 5 years, Sachin dominated the field like he owned it. And then in 1998 with swashbuckling 143 & 134 against the mighty Australians, within the space of 2 days, he reached his pinnacle.

Sir Vivian Richards had made me believe in magic. Tendulkar made me believe this magic was forever.

I was soon to be proved wrong.

Tendulkar started 1999 in the same brilliant vein. In the first test against Pakistan in Chennai. India needed 271 to win in the 4^th innings. He stood up when it mattered, scoring a brilliant 136 on a crumbling pitch. He got out with India needing 17 runs to win with 3 wickets in hand.

India lost that Test match.

Like true ungrateful basterds, we blamed Sachin for throwing away his wicket trying to play an aggressive shot when he should’ve carried India home. But we forgot that he had been playing like this for the past decade & that’s exactly why we loved him. He only knew how to make love, nothing else.

That vicious attack changed him. It broke his heart. He got scared of doing any wrong. He forgot the magic. He forgot how to make love. Cricket lost its greatest lover. But, I didn't know any of this. Not yet.

In India’s first Super-Sixes match against Australia in World Cup 1999, Sachin came out to bat. I couldn’t recognize him.

He scored a duck. But it was those 4 balls he faced from Glen McGrath that I will never forget. For the first time I saw fear of failure in Sachin’s eyes. The burden of the billion weighed him down. His feet unsure, nerves jittery & resolve melting. The man who was there on that pitch wasn’t the Sachin I had known for a decade. He was someone pretending to be him.

In that moment, something died inside me. I knew it too well; the Sachin that made love to the ball had gone missing. What I didn’t know in that moment was that he was gone forever.

There on his marriage with Cricket started to feel like a forced arranged marriage. Something Sachin was trying too hard to save.

In the next 14 years magic was taken over by empty statistics & hollow centuries to make every one of the billion happy. And boy, did he make them happy.

He broke all the possible records. Like Taj Mahal, it took him 22 years to bring home the World Cup. It was a glorious day for India & Sachin was hailed as the Best Ever. With the World Cup, Sachin had checked all the boxes. Nothing more was left to achieve statistically.

Now that he retires 2 years later, a lot of critics, and half-a-billion reckon in hindsight, Tendulkar should have hung the boots right after the World Cup triumph. It'd have been a glorious closure to an illustrious career.

They say that looking at his returns over the last two years. Statistics show Sachin has faded in his final 2 years, compared to his previous 22 years of International Cricket. And statistics don’t lie. Statistics, bloody statistics.

You know it kills me that the only thing the billion cared about is Sachin scoring 100s. Not how he scored them. All the billion cared about was seeing Sachin bat, not India win. All the billion cared about was the World Cup, to be Champions, not playing like true Champions. All the billion cared about was to keep Sachin’s marriage last as long as possible, yet not one damn person cared about his Love. No wonder no one noticed his love disappear on that chilly January morning in 1999.  

Now after 24 years of his journey with Cricket, Sachin has asked for divorce. And we all believe it will be all over on 18^th November, in Mumbai, when Sachin plays his 200^th Test against West Indies.

But I can assure you that ain’t true. My marriage ended y’day. Sachin’s had ended a long time ago.

My love affair with Cricket is dead too. This is my last letter for Cricket. Sachin, the God is Dead. Goodbye.