5 things India will miss in the post-Sachin Tendulkar era

Sachin Tendulkar was the first to score a double century in ODIs.

This is a very difficult one to write, because there are not 5 but more than 5 million things that all of us Indians will miss about the great man. It is very difficult to pick 5 that absolutely stand out. Still, I have made an effort to list them thinking what I, at least, would miss now that he is no longer part of Indian cricket as a player, excluding the very obvious thing that the whole world will miss- runs flowing from his blade.

5. Records tumbling every time he played

Kapil Dev on Sachin – “You can’t contain Sachin’s deeds in a statistical frame. He brings unstinted joy to the art of batting. Statistics will happen because cricket is about runs and wickets. But how can you evaluate Sachin’s contributions by just counting the number of runs he has scored. To me, he best symbolises the heights an individual can rise to dominate a team sport. Words can never capture the beauty of Sachin’s cricket.”

Not that he ever cared for personal records, but it was pure fun for us as viewers to see old records tumbling and new records being made every time he batted, at least for the latter half of his career when he was scaling heights no one had reached before. It was fun to expect another ton every time he was batting, and it was a disappointment every time he missed one, especially when he got out in the nervous 90s. He also has a record for getting out most number of times in that score range, mind you.

He has such a high number of records to his name that nowadays we see articles titled ‘Five records Sachin does not hold’, now that he has retired. There will have to be another player of his stature if we have to experience the joy of such huge records being challenged and new records being created almost every time the player plays, or else this joy dies with his retirement. Many critics have constantly come up with bullshit about him playing for personal records, to which his own statement was an apt reply,

“When people throw stones at you, you turn them into milestones.”

4. Sachin the Gentleman

Andrew Symonds once addressed Sachin thus, “To Sachin, the man we all want to be”.

Sachin has always walked. Plain and simple. No second thoughts were given by him ever in this regard. If he edged the ball, he would start walking without even looking at the umpire. This is a quality very few people possess in today’s times, and the game has one gentleman less now that he has retired. Dravid and Gilchrist are two other names that come to mind when it comes to walking. Dravid, no doubt, is regarded as the greatest gentleman of the game. But Sachin is no less. You can expect him to behave in the best manner possible on a cricket field, and no wonder he is considered the best example of how a player of the game should be. He also faced harsh decisions quite a few times, especially when Steve Bucknor was officiating. But he never questioned his decisions.

In 24 years of international cricket, he sledged just once, and that too because it was a team strategy to try and upset Glenn McGrath’s rhythm in a Champion’s Trophy game in Kenya. The ruse worked well, and India won the match. Other times when bowlers tried and acted fresh with him, he let his bat do the talking, the latest example of which was seen in his last Test innings when Tino Best was bowling to him.

Apart from the above, he wasn’t involved in a single controversy in his long career as far as one can remember. Sachin and controversy almost seem like two opposite words. He was usually among the people who did the work of calming people down whenever temperatures rose in the middle of the cricket pitch, or otherwise. Even during the very sensitive monkeygate controversy, he was called upon to describe his version of the incident so that a clearer perspective of things could be got.

Cricket will forever miss this little gentleman.

3. His bowling

The world’s best batsman has 46 Test and 154 ODI wickets to his name. Surely, that is an aspect of him that will be missed. His ‘googly’s which managed to confuse even the most well settled of batsmen proved to be a trump card for all those who have captained India when Sachin played. His simple action and run-up which ended with sometimes the most lethal of deliveries were something that all of us enjoyed watching. It was a different feeling whenever the Master Blaster got a wicket, unlike when other bowlers got wickets. It just felt right when somebody got out to him, and the celebration which followed was just pure happiness.

He has an economy of 5.1 in ODIs with two 5-wicket hauls, and an average of 44.48. These are pretty impressive stats considering that he was the best batsman of his time. He had that element in his bowling which sent the signal to the watchers that something was going to happen the very next delivery. If you have watched Sachin bowl I am sure you can relate, you almost expect something (most often a wicket) when he is given the ball. He was handed the ball most times because of his knack of breaking set partnerships, and he delivered more often than not. This trump card option as a fifth or sixth bowler in the side will be longed for, now that he is gone.

2. The inspiration that he was

The team will surely miss his experience and guidance. It is every young cricketer’s dream to play alongside him, and almost the whole team looked up to him for inspiration. After all, he was a veteran of the game for most of his career, since after 10 years of cricket behind you can be called one. That way, he was a veteran for 14 years! This is what TIME magazine had to say about this man’s experience:

“When Sachin Tendulkar traveled to Pakistan to face one of the finest bowling attacks ever assembled in cricket, Michael Schumacher was yet to race a F1 car, Lance Armstrong had never been to the Tour de France, Diego Maradona was still the captain of a world champion Argentina team, Pete Sampras had never won a Grand Slam.

When Tendulkar embarked on a glorious career taming Imran and company, Roger Federer was a name unheard of; Lionel Messi was in his nappies, Usain Bolt was an unknown kid in the Jamaican backwaters. The Berlin Wall was still intact, USSR was one big, big country, and Dr Manmohan Singh was yet to “open” the Nehruvian economy. It seems while Time was having his toll on every individual on the face of this planet, he excused one man. Time stands frozen in front of Sachin Tendulkar. We have had champions, we have had legends, but we have never had another Sachin Tendulkar and we never will.”

It is as if Tendulkar has been part of the game forever. And so, he was the best person to look up to for any advice regarding any situation of the game, as he himself has been taught by experience which is the best teacher. He will greatly be missed in those team meetings on the field that happen during critical stages of a game.

Not only that, his commitment towards fielding even at this age is a treat to watch. Never has anyone associated Sachin with poor fielding, even till today when he retired at the age of 39. It was a morale booster for the team whenever they saw him running with all his might just to collect the ball inside the boundary and save a run for the team. Such displays of commitment that are a lesson for everybody else on the field, shall be missed greatly.

1. His presence

BBC on Sachin: “Beneath the helmet, under that unruly curly hair, inside the cranium, there is something we don’t know, something beyond scientific measure. Something that allows him to soar, to roam a territory of sport that, forget us, even those who are gifted enough to play alongside him cannot even fathom. When he goes out to bat, people switch on their television sets and switch off their lives.”

His presence, and the effect that it had on everyone around him or on those watching him on television, will be hard to recreate. When Sachin is present on your side, you could never feel wrong. You felt complete. From the fellow player in the team bus to those who shared the dressing room with the great man, all of them will vouch for the fact that his presence added a new dimension of feelings altogether within everyone.Any debutant would feel that his dream has come true if he could be a part of a match that Sachin played. That is true even for players from sides that he played against. One almost feels sorry for the future debutants because they will ever get a chance to play alongside him.

Almost all players of his time including big names like Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly, Anil Kumble, Steve Waugh, Matthew Hayden, Andrew Flintoff, Wasim Akram and Allan Donald have said that it was a privilege having played with or against him. Players have felt honoured bowling to him, sharing the team huddle with him and even having practiced in the nets with him. Those who have built batting partnerships with him have thanked the stars for the opportunity.

So much respect was hardly commanded by anyone else during his time. It was a different environment altogether whenever the great man was batting, bowling or even fielding the ball. It was as if everyone (including players on the field) looked on in awe as the genius went about his work. All this has been taken out of cricket in the wink of an eye with his retirement.

There are so many things that his presence created. Every time he walked out to bat, the crowd would stand and applaud, and that was true for almost any ground in the world, mind you. This kind of admiration and fan-following was neither created by anyone else, nor can be expected by any player in the future. There were instances when the overseas crowd wanted a game which their side would win but would have a Sachin ton. It was almost a novelty, perhaps the best thing you could witness on a cricket pitch, a Sachin hundred. People who did witness it live felt that they had got back their money’s worth many times over.

Such was the aura that he created with his presence, that Hashim Amla once remarked, “Nothing bad can happen to us if we’re on a plane in India with Sachin Tendulkar on it.”