The Curious Case of Sachin Tendulkar

A day which will be remembered for Sachin Tendulkar's remarkable achievement of scoring a hundred international centuries, will ironically not be a very happy memory for Sachin Tendulkar himself. A man who proudly wears a helmet with an Indian flag on it every time he walks out to bat, would have preferred an Indian victory over him scoring a hundred.
There are these die-hard Sachin fans who consider him God and worship him. To them, cricket starts and ends with Sachin scoring runs. If Sachin scores a century and India wins, he is the guiding force of India. If he scores a century and India loses (which seems to happen more often), then it is the team's fault that they ruined a Sachin century !! This is testimony to a sad fact that we prefer individual brilliance and flair over team effort when it comes to sports in India.

Sachin is an amazing cricketer and a more amazing human being. When you start branding him 'God', then it becomes necessary to argue irrationally to defend his mistakes (for only humans err). It is a fact that Sachin tends to put brakes on India's scoring rate when he is in 90s. Even in today's match,  India ended up 20-30 runs short. The bowling was also very bad and it is a totally different argument how those runs would have changed the result. (In fact, knowing the kind of bowling we had, the batsmen should have looked for the extra 20 runs.) Nevertheless, the point is that Sachin was once again guilty of slowing India's progress.
This becomes the single point of argument for the other group of people who think Sachin is selfish. They find it amusing that the team loses when he scores centuries and start questioning Sachin-devotees what's wrong with their God. Due to all the media hype and irrational behavior by fans, these people tend to hate Sachin himself. It is unfortunate that a great man is robbed of admiration, by the very people who elevated him to great heights.

Without swinging to extremes, let us accept and celebrate the greatness of 'The Master Blaster'. He has made mistakes and his nervous 90s may have robbed us some matches, but that is a part of being human. As long as we don't imagine him to be something he is not, we can always enjoy his cricket.

Comments

Thanu said…
Nicely summarised.
16 March, 2012 23:36
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