A Hundred Hundreds and a Million Salutes

When Sachin Tendulkar scored his first international hundred, Nelson Mandela was in jail, liberalization was yet to dawn on India, Croatia was not a country, and the internet was a captive of a few computer labs. 

The world has changed since then. Sachin has journeyed to the age of 39 years. The body is not as swift on the pitch as it used to be. The back foot punches, the pulls, the hooks have reduced in number. What remains unchanged, however, is the hunger that Sachin walked down to the pitch with, his flawless technique, and his Cricketing genius that is rarer than the twenty-ninth of February. And yesterday, as all of us know, Sachin created a record that wasn't even thought of till the last decade. A hundred international hundreds are a record second only to Bradman's average of 99.94. It will survive the test of time. It will last for years and years together, through different ages of Cricket, just like Bradman's has.

Over the most illustrious career in the history of the game, Sachin has climbed several heights, some of which are so high that nobody knew of them before Sachin reached there. He has ruled the game, and ruled it like nobody ever has. Not only has he been the greatest Cricketer of the modern era but he may also be the greatest sportsman of his time, for nobody has dominated a sport for more than two decades. 

Yes, Indians have a habit of glorifying the ordinary. The nation is known to overdo things. We are fanatic about India and Indians. We are never objective, we fail to believe that we could be the best in the world. It took some of us years to accept that Sachin was the best  because they had almost given up all hope on anything Indian being the best in the world. We needed that to be told by the others. We read the Sydney Morning Herald in 1992, we read the Daily Telegraph time and again in the nineties, and then we saw the cover page of the Time magazine. That was when even the most cynical of the Indians accepted that Sachin was the best in the business. 

Now it has been 23 years since he batted for India for the first time. All the discussions about Sachin's greatness are over and done with, the world knows that he is the best. Sachin is someone who has given us, as a nation, a reason to believe that we could be the best in the world. He is an inspiration to me, to my city, and to my entire country. As the youth of India, rather than looking for some virtually non-existent poor sections of his sublime career just for the sake of some specious arguments, let's stand united in admiration for someone who has deservedly been the best in the world in what he does, and remains as one of independent India's priciest possessions. 

Cricket is as lucky to be played by Sachin Tendulkar as Sachin Tendulkar is to play Cricket. He is one in a million or more, and nothing can change that. Take a bow, Sachin, and take more.