A Genius striving for perfection. Review on Sachin Tendulkar

No other Indian is so easily recognized as this man. Every smile of his, every movement of his is watched, amplified and judged by the media. The nation prays when he gets a backache. The spectators pray for India to loose a wicket so that Tendulkar will walk out to bat. The media pillories him when he requests the finance ministry to exempt him from customs to import a gift.

For Sachin Tendulkar, all these mean nothing. He guards his privacy like a lioness guarding her cubs. He doesn t enjoy talking to the media as much as destroying the bowlers, but he knows he has to live with the media attention, the criticism and idolization he receives every day, every week, every year repeatedly ever since he stepped out into an international match for the first time in Karachi in 1989.

If you watch Sachin Tendulkar bat, you can observe one fact. He dictates terms to the bowlers. He will be in control. All options to outthink or find a weak spot in his batting are ruled out. There is just one way ? wait for him to make a mistake. If that happens early, the opponent captain is lucky. If not, God save the fielders !!.

There is just one person to challenge Sachin Tendulkar today in batting . That one person is Sachin Tendulkar himself!! He takes batting to a different plane. He sets new standards. A forty is a decent score for a batsman, but not for Tendulkar. The media terms his forties as failures, simply because it is too low for this genius, though he has crossed the stage when he needs to prove anything to anyone. He has faced and overcome almost any challenge you can imagine in the cricket ground. He would chuckle at the idea of playing for the title ?Best Batsman in the world?.

In his own mild and coy voice, he would say that he prefers India being called as the best team in the world. How deeply he means that would be validated if you recollect the despair distributed all over his face after India lost the World Cup finals. The master knew that he had lost perhaps the last chance to be a part of World cup winning team.

Two short flings with captaincy did bring out the human side of the genius. Few of his strategies backfired and perhaps, he did not back the right people. The best achievers are not always good at bringing out the best in others. History has repeated this claim, although there are a few exceptions. A nation, which elates a cricketer to a demi-god one moment only to plummet him to the gutter the next moment, did not take defeats under Tendulkar s captaincy kindly.

Suddenly, his batting failures, his inability to convert big scores to Indian wins and his prejudices were the biggest villains. Logic took the backseat and none paid attention to the fact that there were ten other members in the team. A scapegoat was needed for the failures and the little master had to sign off as captain unceremoniously.

Any statistics about Tendulkar would daze the reader. The sheer magnitude of the runs scored, centuries made, catches and wickets taken are all testimonials to the desperate attempts of great bowlers like Warne, Mcgrath, Donald. You will also find a few batsmen who paid the penalty for not taking his leg spinners seriously. Moin Khan will tell you how perilous Tendulkar s innocuous looking googly is even if it is the last ball of the day.

You cannot separate the quest to be a class above the rest and the passion to do things perfectly from this amazing cricketer as long as he is on the field. This is the secret why he is the nation s most recognized and idolized man, even after playing for fifteen years and seeing one generation come and go in a game where questions are asked about your retirement on your 30 th birthday.