The Hindu : Sachin gets his stage, at last!

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Mar 22, 2003

Sport

Sport - World Cup

Sachin gets his stage, at last!

By Nirmal Shekar

HE is in a trance. He is performing in a trance. It is the trance of a missionary, the exalted state of a sage on the threshold of nirvana. It is the trance of an Edmund Hillary within a few steps of the summit on the Everest, of a Hemingway writing the last chapter of the Old Man and the Sea.

You could see it in Sachin Tendulkar's eyes on Thursday. You could see it in his body language. You could sense it in every breath he took, in his tunnel-visioned focus on a slow wicket against bowlers whose greatest joy would be in telling their grandchildren that they bowled to the great man in a World Cup semifinal.

The little genius knows he's almost there. And he was not going to let anything get in his way. To him, the world has come to a standstill. Everything has been shut out. Only one thing matters. It is the state of mind of a great champion in sight of the biggest goal of his career, the intensity of a Mohammed Ali a solitary blow away from knocking down George Foreman.

Most of all, it is the trance of man who has waited a long time for this day, for this great opportunity, for this career pinnacle.

And what a long wait it has been — 14 long years since he happened on the international stage in Pakistan, a baby-faced boy wonder standing up to the bombardment from a Wasim Akram at the peak of his powers, not batting an eyelid, unflustered and hardly overawed even as his classmates in school played "friendly'' matches with tennis balls at Shivaji Park in Mumbai.

It has been a long wait indeed for Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar. Can you imagine a Pete Sampras playing in his first Wimbledon final 14 years after his debut as a pro? Can you imagine a Tiger Woods having to wait 14 years to get a chance to win the Augusta Masters?

The point is, in individual sports, everything is in your hands. If you are the best, you can win the best events in your sport at a fairly young age. The same doesn't hold good in team sports. For so much depends on how the other men on the team with you perform.

Yet, when the world celebrates your genius time and again, when the greatest cricketer that ever lived — Don Bradman — is quoted as saying that watching you he was reminded of his own style of batting, when a whole country worships at your dancing feet, the frustration mounts each time your team fails to match your world beater status.

Little wonder, then, Tendulkar is as focused as he is now. He would be approaching his 34th birthday when the next World Cup in the West Indies takes place and who knows what will happen in the four years in between?

This is Tendulkar's best chance to leave his mark on history as a team man. This is his best chance to prove that he is more than just a batting machine, that he is, first and last, a believer in team work and winning for the team and the country matters more to him than anyone else.

Not that we don't know. We've always known that the little master took greater pride in team success than in the accomplishment of any individual landmarks. But the point is, there would have been a huge hole in his career factfile if he had not had the opportunity to perform on the biggest stage in the game — a World Cup final.

Viv Richards found that opportunity when he was at his regal best and came up with an unforgettable unbeaten century in the 1979 final against England, disdainfully stepping down and across to loft an intended yorker from Mike Hendrick for a six off the last ball of the innings.

And almost every other great player has had the chance to play in a World Cup final over the last 28 years since the first event was held in 1975. You name them, they've been there. Clive Lloyd, Gordon Greenidge and the great fast bowlers of that era. Allan Border, Dennis Lillee and Steve Waugh. Imran Khan, Kapil Dev and Sunil Gavaskar.

But, time and time again, the opportunity eluded Tendulkar. He came closest in 1996 at home but that humiliating collapse when chasing against Sri Lanka at the Eden Gardens dashed his hopes, and millions of others.

Now the great man is there. And how much he wanted to get there was reflected in his eyes when he playing against Kenya on Thursday. In fact, his hunger for the chance to play in the Cup final was obvious from the very beginning.

``Behold, I teach you the Superman; he is the lightning, he is this frenzy,'' wrote Friedrich Nietzsche in Thus Spake Zarathustra.

The great German philosopher's context was rather more exalted. But we did see the cricketing version of the Superman against Pakistan when the little genius was all lightning and frenzy.

Quite the most amazing thing about Tendulkar's batting in this World Cup is how logic has blended with instinct at the crease. He is like a virtuoso Formula One driver on a race track — logic rules the start but quickly instinct takes over when all thought ceases.

That's the key to instinctive play — thought should cease. When Tendulkar is on song, he is surely not thinking about making a big hundred or anything as pedestrian as that. To me, it is important that the great man doesn't even worry about winning the Cup for India when he steps out to open the innings against Australia on Sunday. He should just let his instinct guide him as he did against Pakistan when he was Nietzsche's lightning and frenzy.

Van Gogh never worried about how popular his canvas would turn out to be when he painted the Sunflowers. Nor did Nietzsche concern himself about how many might read his book when he penned the classic Beyond Good and Evil.

Ah, genius, works of genius. Play it again Sachin, to borrow an unforgettable one-liner from the war-time classic Casablanca.

Yes, play it again Sachin. You might never get this chance again. But please don't worry about winning the Cup for India. We don't want genius to carry any extra baggage.

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