Sachin Tendulkar's ability to generate mind-numbing numbers has survived to the very end of his prodigious career. When tickets for his 200th and final five-day test match went on sale Monday, the 19.7 million hits within the first hour crashed the website selling them.
That overwhelming demand to see Tendulkar's final test, which starts Thursday in Mumbai, testified to his unmatched standing in India as both a sports and a cultural icon.
'Jordan, Woods and Beckham may cross more boundaries,' the American writer Mike Marqusee reckoned in 2002, in one of the most perceptive portraits of Tendulkar. 'But nowhere do those players carry the weight of expectation that Tendulkar carries in India (and among the Indian diaspora).'
Much of that greatness comes from the fact he consistently fulfilled those expectations. Few players have left so comprehensive or so potentially enduring a mark in the record books.
He will become the first man to play 200 five-day tests, and he has already played more one-day internationals, 463, than anyone else. He is the highest run scorer - 15,847 in tests and 18,426 in one-days - in both formats. He has also scored 100 or more runs more often than anyone else in both formats, with 51 in tests and 49 in one-days, giving him a neat and unprecedented 100 centuries in international cricket.
He is the exceptional phenomenon, the child prodigy who exceeded his potential. Tendulkar was the youngest active test cricketer - and the fourth-youngest ever - when he made his debut in 1989 at just 16 years and 205 days old. He leaves the game 24 years later as the oldest active international player.
Those extraordinary numbers reflect both his durability and the sharp increase of the number of international cricket matches played since he started.
But if there is a doubt where he ranks historically, consider that Tendulkar was the only active player named by Wisden Cricketers' Almanack to its all-time team last month. The sport's leading chronicle had 150 years of cricket to choose from.
'He was easily the best in all conditions against all types of bowling and he had a wonderful temperament' the Australian spin-bowler Shane Warne, another member of the all-time team, wrote this week in The Daily Telegraph. Tendulkar scored 20 of his international centuries against Australia, which was the dominant team for much of his career.
'He has no weaknesses. He has been the complete batsman,' Geoffrey Boycott, the English player who left the sport as the leading tester scorer when he retired in 1982, wrote in The Guardian.
Perhaps the definitive tribute came earlier in Tendulkar's career. Donald Bradman, who played for Australia from 1928 to 1948, is the one batsman in the game's history who can be conclusively listed ahead of Tendulkar. His career average of 99.94 runs per dismissal in test cricket was, it has been calculated, the statistical equivalent of a .394 lifetime batting average in baseball.
When Bradman looked at the diminutive stature of the 5-foot-5, or 1.65-meter, Tendulkar, at his supernatural balance and footwork and at his extraordinary bat speed, the Australian admitted to recognizing more than a little of himself.
Bradman's life also provided a taste of what was to come for Tendulkar. Bradman's greatness made him not just a hero, but an unmatched symbol for an emerging nation. But where he carried the hopes of at most 8 million people, Tendulkar has been burdened with the aspirations of 1.2 billion.
'He has carried India for 20 years, so now it is time we should carry him,' Virat Kohli, the best and brightest of India's next generation, said as Tendulkar's teammates hoisted him on a chair for a lap of honor after their victory in the 2011 World Cup in India.
That role as the pre-eminent hero of newly confident, modernizing and aspirational India has made this son of the Mumbai middle class - his father was a university professor - immensely rich. Forbes magazine rated him this year as the world's 51st highest-earning athlete, with an income of $22 million. Wealth X, a Singapore-based analyst of the super-rich, has estimated his personal worth at $160 million, more than the next four richest cricketers combined.
Fame robbed him of his privacy, but never of the psychological balance that underpinned his triumphs. He was eloquent with his bat rather than with words, sidestepping any controversies and remaining free of the slightest hint of scandal.
At the core of his existence as the best-adjusted of superstars remained his genius as a cricket player. The Australian player Matthew Hayden described his batting as 'A stillness in a frantic world.'
'With so much happening around him, he never said in his career 'I want to do other things' or 'I should move on it is too hard,'' his longtime teammate Rahul Dravid told the Press Trust of India. 'His love of the game stood out above all. He's been able to maintain that balance.'
Records can be broken. South Africa's Jacques Kallis or England's Alastair Cook might overtake his test numbers, but Tendulkar's impact will remain.
'Sachin has influenced every cricketer who has taken up the job in the last 24 years and has touched millions around the globe,' his former teammate Anil Kumble told the Press Trust of India.
And if the sense of loss is most intense in India this coming week, it will scarcely be any less in the rest of the cricketing world.
Post a Comment