Arise, world, it’s Sachin Tendulkar’s final act on the World Cup stage…
Arise, world, its Sachin Tendulkar's final act on the World Cup stage
By H Natarajan
The curtain comes down today – April 2 – on the 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup – the seventh edition of the game’s quadrennial showpiece in which the legend of Sachin Tendulkar set foot…. Okay, okay, before you come down on me like a ton of bricks and ask me to get my facts right, hang on. Will come to that in a while…
Wankhede Stadium, November 5, 1987. Mumbai’s pride and joy, the great Sunil Gavaskar, was playing his last-ever One-Day International innings. Gavaskar came into the game after scoring his first and only ODI hundred at Nagpur – an electrifying 103 off 88 balls, embellished with 10 fours and three sixes. No mistakes there, it was Gavaskar, alright! It won him the Man of the Match award (jointly with Chetan Sharma, who got hat-trick) and helped India rout New Zealand. But Gavaskar’s final ODI game at the Wankhede Stadium, in the semi-final against England, was eminently forgettable. Phillip DeFreitas uprooted the great man’s off-stump when he was just on four.
As a mediaperson who is expected to be objective and neutral in the call of duty, I don’t remember many occasions when I have applauded players from inside the Press Box. But this was a huge moment. I knew that this was possibly the last time we saw the great man play for India – and that’s how it eventually turned out to be. I stood up and applauded the maestro right till his 5 feet, four inch frame disappeared into the pavilion.
The loss not only signaled the end of India’s campaign in the World Cup but also the end of an era. No batsman played the great West Indians paceman of the times like Andy Roberts, Michael Holding, Joel Garner and Malcolm Marshall as fearlessly and as productively as Gavaskar. As an Indian, it was heart-breaking to see him go. There were unshed tears in my eyes to see the man – often hailed as the greatest since Sir Don Bradman – leave a huge void in Indian cricket.
But even as the sun was setting in the Arabian Sea, and metaphorically on Indian cricket, unknown to anybody the Almighty had made grandiose plans for Indian cricket. Even as Gavaskar was sweating it out on the Wankhede Stadium one last time, a tiny schoolboy was running excitedly beyond the boundary to pick the balls that were struck for four and return it to the Indian and English fielders. Yes, he was a ball boy. His name? Sachin Tendulkar!
The precocious lad was soon to play with many of the Indian players who played that 1987 semi-final like Kapil Dev, Krishnamachari Srikkanth, Mohammad Azharuddin, Ravi Shastri and Navjot Sidhu. In fact, he has played in every World Cup since he was a ball boy – a record six World Cups, to be precise. In effect, he has been on the World Cup stage seven times, counting his efforts as a ball boy in the 1987 edition!
As the World Cup draws to a close, I see some eerie similarities between Gavaskar and Tendulkar. Both men got Man of the Match Awards in their penultimate World Cup innings for India. Destiny has now ensured that the Wankhede Stadium will be their common farewell ground to their World Cup campaigns – a venue that is littered with their amazing exploits.
Great players have a sense of occasion and theatre. And there is none better than Tendulkar when it comes to scripting amazing tales of guts, grit and glory on the big stage. Some of the very special moments in his career have come at the Wankhede Stadium. It was at the Wankhede that he cracked a hundred on his Ranji Trophy debut. It was at the Wankhede that he scored 140 and 139 as captain in the 1994-95 Ranji Trophy final which Mumbai won on the first innings. It was again at the Wankhede that he got his Ranji best score of 233 not out against Tamil Nadu in 1999-00.
Before the start of the 2011 World Cup, a common fantasy among Indian cricket fans was to see India winning the World Cup and Tendulkar scoring a match-winning hundred. By scoring his 98 and 99th international hundreds earlier in this championship, Tendulkar has heightened that fantasy of a billion Indians while on the threshold of making it a reality the awesome feeling of scoring his 100th international century in India’s World Cup final triumph.
There is something surreal about Tendulkar’s glittering career. It seems almost beyond the realms of a human to achieve what he has. The record books may show the 2011 World Cup final as Sri Lanka vs India. But for many Indians, it’s Sri Lanka vs God.
A nation has proposed, its now time for God to dispose!
(H Natarajan, formerly All India Deputy Sports Editor of the Indian Express and Senior Editor with Cricinfo/Wisden, is the Executive Editor of CricketCountry.com. A prolific writer, he has written for many of the biggest newspapers, magazines and websites all over the world. A great believer in the power of social media, he can be followed on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/H.Natarajan and on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/hnatarajan )