The Pain of the Master

[You may find certain words in this post which may not be appreciated in a public forum, but I am/shall NOT be apologetic about it, as I am just expressing my thoughts as a normal frustrated and disgusted crcket fanatic]

A banner in SCG ground on 4th January 2008 read, "Commit all your crimes when Sachin is batting. They will go unnoticed because even the Lord is watching."

We, Indians, grew up watching Cricket. You can smell its flavor in every nook & corner of our homes. We eat cricket, sleep with it & wake up thinking about it only. Obsession is not wrong, even for a passion like this over-obsession can also be understandable. But turning blind or analyzing the reasons behind our failure should not be avoided as well.

And today, we are also debating about being a top class team and reaching the number one position in world cricket. Have we ever asked ourselves, that whether do we even deserve it or do we have the skills, temperament and the attitude to be in that position???

Just a brief glance over last couple of month’s developments (though we find such things since time immemorial)

-> We bring in Rahul Dravid to Champions Trophy saying he is the need of the hour. Then we dump him in the next series saying he is not fitting into the scheme of things. Now here, no one knows how our selectors and BCCI defines “need of the hour” and “the scheme of things”.

-> We field players like Harbhajan, who himself does not know what he is doing in the team for last 3 years. And players like Amit Mishra are picked to provide water and snacks for players. Gambhir has gone to hibernation post last year’s IPL and cricket season. But he is on seventh heaven winning ICC player of year award.
-> Yuvraj’s tummy is crossing all the limits and he is our best fielder. We are a young side (or so they say) and we do the maximum errors in the field, most of them are of school-level standards. To place on record, Bangladeshi guys are 2.5 times better fielders than us.
-> People like Rohit Sharma and few others still does not know why they are not in the team when people like Ravindra Jadeja and Virat Kohli are warming the bench inside the team pavilion.
-> Ishant Sharma has become Irfaan Pathan, part-2. The other seamers are saying they are missing Zaheer bhai! Do they even know where to deliver a good-length ball?
-> After all this, Yuvraj & Viru has time to speak “jab tak balla chal raha hai, thaat hai” on a TV commercial. Do they even understand what they are saying!

And then, there is this man, called some Tendulkar who is playing for just 20 years. Two decades, 435 matches and still scoring more than the above mentioned morons. Still having that hunger. Still having the thinking to win & only win. To hang in there till he can to get that extra run, to save that extra run & to run that extra yard to take a catch. Some sons of guns ask him again & again what is his motivation, to which he simply answers that for him cricket is his life and playing for India is a privilege throughout. Everyday, when he wakes up he feels honored to wear that helmet and that blue shirt. How many youngsters care the same way, he cared playing for India not for 1, 2 or 5, but for 20 years. And if you watch him playing even today, you can see he still cares!

We are bigger chokers than South Africans. May be the biggest. But we are also most hopeful people on the planet earth. Even Obama must have thought, I could fool these people 100 times easier than Americans. Yes, we love to stay in a negative mindset being hypocrites. People blame the same Tendulkar, stating that when he scores a ton we lose. Those b******s don’t understand that there are 10 other players who also need to deliver. Also, these d***heads watch each time Sachin comes to bat and they celebrate each time India wins. Hypocrisy at its best.

I was expecting Ponting to say in the post match presentation after yesterday’s match that: Sachin is unfortunate to play with such a team. Because the team neither has passion, determination nor the will to win, and this is where teams like Aussies and South Africans are differentiated. Sixty one years ago, at the end of a tour of England by Don Bradman's famous pack, John Arlott put it thus: "Australianism" wrote Arlott, "means single-minded determination to win - to win within the laws but, if necessary, to the last limit within them. It means where the 'impossible' is within the realm of what the human body can do, there are Australians who believe that they can do it - and who have succeeded often enough to make us wonder if anything is impossible to them. It means they have never lost a match - particularly a Test match - until the last run is scored or their last wicket down."

How many times this tiny man, the master, is going to save us? How many times are we going to lean upon his shoulders? For God’s sake, he is just a human and just another player. Just a week back, the great Yuvraaj said in a press meet that they all are calling Sachin ‘grandpa’, because of the amount of cricket he played. Yuvraj still behaves as casually as he said that statement with absolute zero learning. These f**ing idiots need to be tamed sooner.

Till the day, the other 10 morons in the team won’t think like 10% of what Sachin thinks, we should stop discussing crap things like becoming numero uno or being a world-class team. Deserve before you desire.

Saluting tiny Tendlya of Sharadashram Vidyamandir, the shy Sachin practicing at Shivaji Park, the little champion, India’s run machine and Master Sachin Tendulkar. We still love you, and I can say with more than 100% assurance that India won’t watch cricket the same way if you won’t be there. You define cricket to your fans, to India.

The stupid ‘hopeful’ in me want to say: “Just don’t go Sachin”