The crowd at Tendulkar's feet

After the fall of the second wicket, time stood still. The state of the game, or the performance of the other batsman got little attention. The crowd of 25,000 came to see just one man

At 3.31pm, M Vijay gets out to a bat-pad catch off Shane Shillingford. There are about 20 overs to go to stumps. Two wickets are down. You don't expect a nightwatchman, with so much time to go, but sometimes people expect the worst. They all look towards the Indian dressing room. A support staff person moves about. There is no sight of either the regular No.4 or a nightwatchman. People keep looking. No signs. Anticipation builds. Tension builds. Suddenly someone realises the umpires have asked Vijay to wait because they are checking the legitimacy of the delivery. A minute has passed, and now someone has realised that. Time has stopped in India once again. Perhaps one last time, who knows?

There are old folk in the crowd, old enough to be his father, who might have seen him as the curly-haired kid in the maidans. Middle-aged people who have given up work today, who have grown with him, who have lived their lives with him as a part of them. Eighteen to 20-year olds who weren't even born when he debuted. Not a single person is sitting. Then they see Vijay has been given the marching orders, 25,000 heads - the loudest 25,000 you can ever imagine - turn to the dressing room. Two wickets have fallen in this over, but nobody is bothered.

	People are so busy counting his steps down the pavilion stairs they haven't even noticed the West Indies team have already formed a guard of honour for him © BCCI  Enlarge

Vijay has become Shillingford's victim twice, twice he has come back flexing his elbow, but nobody has read into the reaction because they are too busy waiting to give the next man in the best possible welcome. So Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar puts on his arm guard, helmet, then gloves, and gets up. Now he comes into public view, and people lose control. They are so busy counting his steps down the pavilion stairs they haven't even noticed the West Indies team have already formed a guard of honour for him. Cheteshwar Pujara, the unbeaten batsman, has joined in. The umpires join in too.

There walks Tendulkar. Possibly for the last time, because the West Indies batsmen haven't turned up in this series. He looks up to adjust to the outside light. Shakes the hand of the West Indies captain, Darren Sammy. Raises his bat to the opposition who earlier in the day gifted him a jersey signed by all of them. Nods once again in acknowledgement.

Tendulkar now bends, picks a piece of the soil, touches it on the peak of his forehead, and sort of crosses his heart. One of the umpires now gives Tendulkar the proper guard. By the time everything has settled down and Tendulkar faces his first ball, it's 3.35pm. Slow over-rate? Nobody cares.

Shillingford bowls, Tendulkar defends with the turn, it reaches on the bounce to short leg. People worry, people go quiet. "A mini heart-attack," one man shouts. Tendulkar defends the next ball, and the over is done.

It's 3.37pm when the next over starts. Six minutes, two balls, countless emotions. Now Pujara takes strike. Now Pujara cuts. Half-cut, half-punch. Past point for four. The crowd goes "Sachiiiiiin, Sachin". Now Pujara drives exquisitely through cover for four. The crowd goes "Sachiiiiin, Sachin". Pujara plays the whole over, but a man invokes the underworld classic, Satya, and shouts "Mumbai ka king kaun? [Who is the king of Mumbai]?" The whole stand replies, "Sachiiiiin, Sachin". "Cricket ka king kaun?" "Sachiiiiin, Sachin."

It's been 10 minutes since they stood up in the stands. Not one person has sat down. Shillingford starts a fresh over. Long-on back, a slip and two short legs in. Tendulkar stands tall, bat in air, squats, then the bat touches down once before the ball is delivered. He sweeps, and a cheer as loud as when India won the World Cup here more than two years ago goes up. We won't have another Bradman. Or maybe we will in the next innings.

You have got to keep in mind that this is a batsman who last scored a Test century in the first week of 2011. Averages 32 since then. Many Indians have argued over the last year that he has overstayed his welcome. The farewell series has been made garish by tasteless administrators trying to milk it. Then you watch this, and wonder what a loss it would have been had he gone without giving people this opportunity.

Forget the garishness. Forget that the opposition has left its Test-match temperament at the customs. Let's escape ephemerally once again. Let's lose ourselves again. Let's forget the last local train before peak-hour traffic. Let's applaud a forward-defensive like a goal.

So Tendulkar defends and we applaud. Then he takes a single to move to 3 off 9. In the next over, Shillingford provides a short ball, which he cuts away for four. About the 100-odd people who had sat down are back up again. They are watching from the terrace of the nearby Income Tax building. The big screen now shows Ramakant Achrekar, Tendulkar's coach, and Rajni Tendulkar, his mother, who are also here. They are both in wheelchairs now. How proud they must be.

	The farewell series has been made garish by tasteless administrators trying to milk it. Then you watch this, and wonder what a loss it would have been had he gone without giving people this opportunity

Slowly, Tendulkar finds the rhythm. He is looking as assured as he has done in this year. He is also getting into the last-dance spirit. The 14th ball he faces, he reaches its pitch and drives it against the turn, because the gaps are on the off side. Past mid-off it goes. Tendulkar 12 off 14. India? It doesn't matter.

By now, every possible rhythmical chant "Sachin" can be made into has been chanted. "Sachiiiiin, Sachin." "Saaaaaachin." "Sachin, Sachin-Sachin-Sachin, Saaaachin." How come no one is out of tune when they chant his name?

This is the same ground where Tendulkar made his first-class debut. Lalchand Rajput, who was run out for 99 batting with Tendulkar, is here. Shishir Hattangadi, the opener in that match, is here. Many players who made their first-class debuts after that are here. Ashok Patel, the bowler who got him out for the first time in first-class cricket, and now lives in the US, has also come here. The Wankhede has changed completely. From the intimate concrete bowl it has now become a classy monster. Tendulkar is still there. Possibly one last time, but he is still batting. A banner in Wankhede says, "Now only humans will play cricket."

Cheteshwar Pujara's sole purpose in life by now is to take the single, and hand over the strike to Tendulkar. Once he drives to long-on, and Mexican wave dies abruptly because Tendulkar is now on strike. Tendulkar is looking solid. Moving right forward in defence against the quicks. Staying back to Shillingford because he hasn't been the best at reading the doosra, so he wants to give himself time to adjust to them off the pitch. He clips Marlon Samuels off the toes in the 27th over, and with that reaches 29 off 45. In his next over, Samuels pitches short, and he punches it to reach 33 off 52.

Tino Best, in the meantime, lobs a throw direct into the stumps at Tendulkar's end. The whole crowd goes "aye aye", which in Mumbai doesn't mean yes. It is their way of pulling someone up. Someone who is threatening their boy. Tendulkar, 40, is still their boy. They will protect him. When Best bowls a bouncer. When Best goes too far in the follow-through. "Tino sucks," shouts one stand. "Shush," goes the rest of the stadium. Best does a namaste [folded hands] as he walks back to his fielding position at fine leg, and all is well between him and the crowd.

The crowd actually couldn't be bothered less. They have come here to watch Tendulkar bat. They want to return tomorrow to watch him bat. They also want him to take most of the bowling left. Story of Tendulkar's life. Realistic expectations and him don't go together.

At 4.54pm, Tendulkar has played out the last ball of the day. He is 38 off 73. Pujara is 34 off 49, and has played some pretty decent shots, but no one has noticed. He could have streaked, and no one would have noticed. It's all forgiven this last time. You can focus on that man's batting alone, especially given he has batted well.

For about 10 seconds, Tendulkar looks at the pitch, waits for Pujara to join him, and then walks back. He raises the bat as he does. That's his promise. Time will stop tomorrow again.

Source: http://www.espncricinfo.com/india-v-west-indies-2013-14/content/current/story/688629.html

Tendulkar: forever icon

In some ways, we know less about him now than before: the more he has played, the more godlike and inscrutable he has become

Ed Smith

---

Tendulkar has had no choice but to go along with what a billion people wanted him to be

Change is constant, but the pace of change is wildly inconstant. Some lives are played out in the context of continuity and stability; others must adapt to dizzying change and upheaval. Endurance, perseverance and resilience are all relative concepts: standing your ground is much harder when the sands are shifting all around you.

In 1989, when Sachin Tendulkar first took guard for India, cricket was mostly played in whites. The dominant team in the world was West Indies. ODI cricket was emerging but Test cricket firmly remained the game's gold standard. T20 was an accidental form of the game, a solution used only when rain shortened the duration of play. When the England Test team played away from home, it still wore the egg-and-bacon colours of the MCC, a strip invented in the 19th century. India was a passionate cricketing nation but a marginal player within the game's power structure and governance - money and influence lay elsewhere.

Twenty-four years later, as Tendulkar lifts his bat for the last time in Indian colours, survey the contours of the cricketing world today. Many more cricket fans love and understand the white-ball version than the red. India is the game's great superpower; it commands such huge television contracts that every other country wants a slice of the goodies. A whole dynasty, the Australian machine of the 1990s and 2000s, one of sport's greatest empires, has risen and retreated. T20, once a mere entertainment, drives the commercial imperatives of the sport.

When the final history of cricket is written - for our purposes here, let's call it the age of Tendulkar - his period has been seen as one of deep change and constant uncertainty. Yet throughout Tendulkar has adapted and endured. He has found answers to every new question - his 49 ODI hundreds are arguably the more remarkable achievement than his 51 Test centuries. And yet he has also belonged to the great, timeless tradition of pure batsmanship. Modern and classical at the same time, Tendulkar has been a cricketer for every stage.

It is a truism that he has faced a unique burden of expectation. That is partly because the changes in Indian society between Tendulkar's first Test and his 200th have trumped even the revolutions in cricket. In 1989, the Indian economy languished from protectionism and introversion. The beginning of India's economic recovery was the moment of Tendulkar's emergence as a global talent. That Tendulkar's career coincided with the emergence of India as an economic power was just that - a coincidence. But the subliminal link between the "Little Master" and a resurgent India provided yet another dimension of pressure and expectation.

So in celebrating Tendulkar's achievements, we are partly paying testament to the weight he has carried. When India won the 2011 World Cup final, Virat Kohli captured a deep truth: "He has carried the burden of our nation on his shoulders for the past 21 years. So it is time that we carried him."

Despite all this - all the many ways in which Tendulkar is admirable and impressive and inspiring - I have found it very difficult to gather together my thoughts about his retirement. My feelings about his career will not settle into a shape or a narrative. I can see the achievements but not the thread. I can list the feats and accolades, but the personality that achieved them eludes me. When I describe him as an enigma, I feel a failure on my part, as a writer. It is my job to find the man underneath the enigma. And I regret that I cannot.

“My feelings about his career will not settle into a shape or a narrative. I can see the achievements, but not the thread. I can list the feats and accolades, but the personality that achieved them eludes me

---

When we watch athletes perform hundreds of times, we nearly always get to know them. Not from their quotes and their interviews but from the sporting performance itself. "An artist is usually a damned liar," DH Lawrence wrote in Studies in Classic American Literature, "but his art, if it be art, will tell you the truth of his day." Change the word "artist" for the word "sportsman" and the same point holds: trust the runs and wickets, not the press-conference quotes.

We see into a sportsman's character by watching him play. We know when they relish the battle, when they allow themselves to enjoy it, when they are anxious and unsettled, when they are confident or in the zone. With players we care deeply about, we know and understand them almost as close friends. Knowing and being known, the mask slipped from the face: that was the playwright Tom Stoppard's definition of the emotion that sustains meaningful relationships.

But there is a strange paradox at the core of Tendulkar's career. The more he has played, the less we can see the real man. The mask has not slipped, it has risen. The carapace has not shrunk, it has grown. In a strange way, less is known about Tendulkar than ever before. The icon has supplanted the man.

Only a handful of human beings can understand what it has been like to be Tendulkar. Bob Dylan, writing in his autobiographyChronicles, said the hardest thing to handle was not criticism but deification. When they called him a prophet, hero and saviour, Dylan replied, "I'm just a song and dance man." Dylan drew upon his innate savvy to wriggle free from the straightjacket of being a redemptive hero. Sportsmen, sadly, find it harder to escape the traps of idolatrous celebrity.

I used to think that Tiger Woods had experienced the weirdest of all sports careers. In his heyday, Woods treated his own humanity almost as a flaw, like a kink in his backswing that needed to be ironed out. Woods wished to ascend from human frailty into machine-like invulnerability.

Now I realise that becoming a machine is much easier than being turned into a god - as Tendulkar has been. Perhaps he had no choice but to go along with what a billion people yearned for him to be. But I cannot avoid the feeling that the god has gradually displaced the man.

I try to understand men; gods leave me cold. Perhaps that is why, when I write about Tendulkar, for all my admiration and awe in the face of his great achievements, the words will not come.

Source: http://www.espncricinfo.com/sachinfarewell/content/story/688093.html