There is really only one minor dispute between the two warring sides on that speech. One side believes that it was actually written in heaven and was delivered on earth on a preordained day by The Gifted One. The other camp tends to favour the theory that it was a spontaneous outpouring here on earth by the god of cricket and delivered here, too, on a predestined and beatific day.
What is never in question is its celestial link; mankind’s ultimate fantasy — the paradise up there in the skies — has to be part of the setting, after all, when it comes to the supreme being (Tendulkar). Oh god, no, now don’t let me down and say that you read the sports pages every day of your life and don’t know what I am talking about. Haven’t you heard of — if not actually heard it live, which actually makes you an apostate — THAT SPEECH?
High on emotion, it was delivered by a gent called Sachin Tendulkar. After all, every kid on the block knows that the great man gently tossed a teardrop with his forefinger and then said something like, “My life, between 22 yards for 24 years, it is hard to believe that wonderful journey has come to an end…”
It was delivered at the Wankhede stadium in Mumbai on November 16, 2013, and it lasted about 21 minutes. And all of us were sure about one thing: nothing much else of significance happened in a country of 1.25 billion people during that time, either on television or on any other screen or anywhere else in the nation. When it comes to Great Farewell Moments in cricket, to my mind, that speech delivered in front of 33,000 hysterical people ranks second only to Don Bradman’s silent walk to the pavilion after being dismissed second ball for a duck in his last Test innings at The Oval on August 14, 1948. On YouTube, the entire package — showing Sir Don walking in, getting out, and walking back, plus three brief interviews about that moment — lasts a mere 2.07 minutes!
Vastly different eras, still vastly different cultures despite globalisation and the internet, yet those two moments have one thing in common — they happened at the right place and time and featured the right men too.
Now imagine you are a sports megastar today, waking up every other morning in some bed, somewhere, not sure if you really want to get out of bed and get to practice in time, not even sure sometimes if you want to go through the whole thing for a few more seasons. And now think of getting it all right, getting the setting right, getting the timing right, getting every single thing you can control to go the way you want it to. How tough is that?
What separates Great Farewell Moments in sport from the average ones and from ones that most of us, and our fathers and sons too, have forgotten all about?
Two of the finest I thought about these things recently when I heard, in quick succession, that two of the finest cricketers I have watched this millennium, Virender Sehwag and Mitchell Johnson, simply just decided that they’ve had enough and quietly sent the word across to the press. Or did they take to Twitter or Facebook or Instagram first to do it?
Surely, Sir Don would have uttered a readily audible astonished ‘What?’ if you had asked about his presence on any of these legendary New Media institution platforms. But that is an old man’s tale for another day.
The question is, how is it some people have the innate intelligence, and courage, to see the fork in the road ahead and make the big decision at the right time while others play themselves into meaningless oblivion?
After all, the undisputed GOAT (greatest of all time) himself got it horribly wrong. The peerless Muhammad Ali, already struck by Parkinson’s, sleep-walked through 10 unwatchable rounds of his last fight against Trevor Berbick (come again, Trevor Who?). It happened in Bermuda because no city in Ali’s native US would grant him the health permit to go into the ring!
If even the best of fairytales do not come anywhere near Tendulkar’s climactic moment, then not even the worst of nightmares would resemble Ali’s demise. The most instantly recognisable sporting figure on earth was literally picked up from the ring and packed into his limousine after his final fight as a boxer.
The Greatest — the man with the magical footwork who turned boxing into a fine art comparable to the best of what you can find at the Louvre in the Right Bank of the Seine in Paris — going out in such ignominious fashion!
Maybe the intelligent ones know how good they would be and for how long. But ultimately it is not simply down to intellect alone. Money, emotions, loved ones in the family, fans…each of these have a role to play in some or many farewells.
Thank goodness the connoisseurs among us never let the final moments define an individual’s greatness, or his place in our hearts. But still we might prefer to watch a Sunil Gavaskar stand up bravely to the spinning might of Iqbal Qasim on a minefield in Bangalore in his farewell innings rather than spend time finding out when and where the great Bjorn Borg played his last professional tennis match.
But in sport, what we prefer is not always what we get.
