The Indian IDOL

PTI

Sachin Tendulkar has been able to address us all, and yet engage individually with each of us. S. Ram Mahesh narrates his own Tendulkar Experience.

I wince every time I see Vinod Kambli on the telly, have for the last 10 years. The left-hander seldom fails to exhume my most shameful childhood memory. I had taken to Sachin Tendulkar rather early — immediately after his first Test innings in fact — and the appearance on the scene of a rival had filled my juvenile mind with insecurity, anger, and loathing. Strong emotions in one so young, but Kambli had proved an immense threat. Not only had he outscored Tendulkar, 346 to 329, at school, he had, in next to no time, lashed his way to two Test double-centuries while Tendulkar’s personal best stood at 165. So I delighted in Kambli’s failure against the West Indies. For the first time Kambli looked fragile; soon he would challenge my hero no more, his Test career amputated when he still averaged over 54. Relief was swiftly overtaken by remorse — fanned perhaps by the fact that Tendulkar appeared genuinely fond of his mate — and as an act of atonement, I prayed for a Kambli comeback. But that never happened, and ever since I have been wracked by guilt.

Fortunately the incident with Kambli was the only dark moment during my days as a Tendulkar die-hard. Supporting the great man, playing each of his innings with him, was always indescribably uplifting. Exactly why I started supporting him, I’m not sure. Maybe it had to do with growing up amidst kids older, cleverer, and stronger than me — watching a 16-year-old stick it to the big boys allowed a certain vicarious satisfaction, a thrill I couldn’t hope to experience just as yet jousting with my companions. Perhaps, as Greg Baum, the Australian writer, says, it had to do with the unconscious recognition and appreciation of beauty. Just as babies supposedly stare longer at faces that are symmetrical, maybe I detected the balance, the bearing, and indeed the symmetry of Tendulkar’s batsmanship and gravitated towards it. Whatever the reason, it became increasingly clear to me as I grew up, and as my understanding of the game improved, that I had unwittingly picked a corker, easing considerably my years in school.

The choice of a hero is central to a kid’s life (or at least it was where and when I was growing up). It’s another layer of identity, an index of self-worth, even something to arrange your life around. When your hero does well, and with Tendulkar this was often through my school life, the world is markedly better for it; even failure carries with it the promise of better times ahead, especially with one as young and prodigious as the Indian. For aspiring cricketers the hero is also the exemplar to both emulate and be judged against. Imitating Tendulkar was both very easy and very difficult. The grip came easy. Bottom hand choking bat handle felt comfortable and natural, but the heavy bat was best left alone. Similarly the stance (the basic assembly which Tendulkar customises to suit occasion and condition) was straightforward: the compact contours Tendulkar’s 5ft 5in body described when he was ready to take strike were so simply elegant, they could be broken down and replicated. Feet slightly apart; legs in line, so one didn’t protrude in front of the other when seen by the bowler; head still and swivelled around to look over the front shoulder; upper body neither hunched nor upright, but slanted comfortably; hands together and by the front thigh when tapping the bat behind the back toecap, but in front of the tummy when the wrists were cocked.

Unfortunately this was where the imitation ended. As Philip Lindsay wrote in the splendid ‘Don Bradman’, “No artist can tell you in words or show you how a painting is created; you copy him to the final brush-stroke only to find the result lumpish, uninspired, while his work will live by some subtle impress of his personality”. In carefully controlled conditions — that is, with neither bowler running in nor ball being hurled — I could persuade my arms to travel the way Tendulkar’s does when he leans into one version of his gorgeous cover-drive, led by the top elbow. But I couldn’t judge length as quickly as him or flit into position as certainly, and this against ‘fast bowlers’ one-third the pace Tendulkar was playing. In time I grew too tall for the stance — which my friends, under significant threat, had said was nearly like Tendulkar’s — effectively severing the only kinaesthetic link to my hero.

Just as I’m not sure of the origins of my obsession with Tendulkar, I’m not sure why the obsession dimmed. What I do know is that there came a time when the stomach lurched less when Tendulkar walked out to bat. Where I once considered a fellow fan with a curious mix of joy and dread (joy because he or she was a worthy ally when confronted with those annoying prats, the Lara lovers; dread because I needed to establish that I was the most faithful, the most rabid), I now reacted with something approaching indifference. Surprisingly, now that I look back, this had nothing to do with Tendulkar’s change of style, which seemed to affect the entire nation. I didn’t think it deserved much fuss. George Headley, the West Indian genius known as Atlas for the burden he carried, once said that he preferred batting on wet, spiteful wickets, for then it was bare-knuckled battle between bowler and batsman, nothing else. I sense a similar facet in Tendulkar’s game: when he is pushed beyond conscious thought, into the realm of reflex and reaction, he reprises the thrilling, brilliant, spontaneous style that characterised his younger days. A lot of his struggles have happened when the cares of the mind have outweighed his freakish physical ability — against spin, when he has had time to think, for instance.

Perhaps the obsession dimmed when, in my mind, I was sure The Transformation was complete. The most rewarding thing about supporting a sportsperson or team is watching the transformation from good to great. With Tendulkar, it was a case of greatness-in-waiting transforming to great. By the time he had made his third Test century (114 at Perth, my favourite), there was little doubt about his destiny. All that remained was his fulfilling it. That it seemed inevitable, and that despite the outrageous pressure he wore he made it seem so, is held up as a measure of his greatness. Granted. But to me the fact that I stayed invested in his career for so long — despite the inevitability — and that I felt again the well-recognised delight of boyhood when Tendulkar passed Brian Lara to become Test cricket’s leading run-getter is everything.

Some of you that have come this far with the story might be wondering who exactly ‘I’ am, or more precisely, who I think I am, hijacking a Tendulkar tribute and making it about me. I confess that I am neither chum nor confidant; I’ve never been in his hotel room, and I’m pretty certain he doesn’t know I exist.

The closest I’ve come to a conversation with the great man was a series of anonymous questions during a meet-the-press type roundtable, which he generously answered after considerable thought. I have not bowled cunning spells to him in the nets or seen how he really is in the privacy of the dressing room.

Until I started covering cricket I hadn’t even seen an innings in situ, coming closest when I risked arrest for an illegal ticket during his 136 against Pakistan at Chepauk. Yet not for a moment have I felt that my Tendulkar Experience was any less authentic than those that have done these things.

The greatest works, of literature, of music, of art, of creation, inspire a sense of ownership, of proprietary, of intimacy, while appealing broadly. Tendulkar has been able to address us all, and yet engage individually with each of us. Sunil Gavaskar said in his column that after watching ‘Tendlya’ as a 15-year-old, he felt reluctant to share him with the rest of the world. I doubt there’s a fan that has felt otherwise.