The Hindu : Sport : Climbing Mount Tendulkar

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Sunday, Dec 11, 2005

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Climbing Mount Tendulkar

Tendulkar is India's sporting colossus, a sportsman beyond compare, writes Nirmal Shekar

On the face of it, it is a strange fact of life that some of the greatest human achievements, among them the truly epochal, seem to lack the element of surprise. When Michelangelo was done with the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, surely those who first set their eyes on the timeless work of art might have felt a sense of awe and wonder. But few who were aware of the real measure of Michelangelo's genius might have been surprised that he had created something as breathtakingly beautiful.

While there can be no real comparison between high art and modern sport, the feeling is similar when an outstanding sportsman raises the bar higher than ever before, as did Sachin Tendulkar on Saturday when he scored his 35th Test century. From the moment he set out to play his first Test innings in Karachi in November 1989 as a baby-faced boy-wonder, Tendulkar was expected to do what he did on Saturday...and much else besides.

Even before he faced his first ball in international cricket, the popular script covering the yet-to-unfold span of his career saw him conquering every peak that a batsman can possibly scale.

Unlike a play or a movie, sport is at once open-ended and unpredictable. We seldom know what is going to happen next, who is going to do what. It is on this capricious stage that the little master from Mumbai has dutifully enacted almost all the heroics that featured in the original popular script, seemingly immune to the pressures set off by the ever-escalating spiral of expectations.

Now, even the great Sunil Gavaskar, with whom Tendulkar shared the world record for the highest number of Test centuries (34) for some time, will have to crane his neck to spot the lonely achiever on a long and celebrated trek to his own batting Everest. Yet, for a brief while, as the great man struggled with a tennis elbow whose ravages were surgically controlled, a question mark did appear out of nowhere. What now? Where is he headed? Is this the beginning of the end? Few injuries may have ever been discussed with as much passion by as many people in the history of sport.

Question mark

What is more, a few days ago, in gloomy Chepauk, as Tendulkar chose to adopt an ultra-conservative approach, it turned out to be a painful watching experience for his millions of fans. Has he, at long last, left his pedestal to join the ranks of the mortals? After all, every great champion is invincible only so long as he has not been seen to be vincible.

The point is, the struggles of the great offer us a rare peek at our icons stripped of their cloak of immortality, a sort of bullet-proof vest that sets them apart from the rest of us. And to see them in flesh can sometimes be shocking, as it was briefly with Tendulkar. The great man's critics predictably saw in the Chepauk innings a sort of narcissistic preoccupation with individual records. Won't they ever learn that collective excellence is built on individual excellence, and not the other way? So, the question remained. Will Tendulkar be Tendulkar ever again? The answer came at Kotla on Saturday. Move over Sunny. Sachin is racing ahead. Move over boys, the king is back. Not only Tendulkar, Indian cricket became Indian cricket again as the little master stroked his way to a peak all his own.

But, in a country where a Tendulkar century is a sporting epiphany beyond compare, neither these statistics, nor anything that the great man might accomplish in the remaining part of his career, can tell us much about why the maestro is the most popular Indian sports icon of our times. For, the real value of the batting hero's contribution to fuelling the collective aesthetic passions of tens of millions of cricket fans in this vast, complex nation, as well as among the Indian diaspora elsewhere on the planet, is something that is at once incomputable and timeless.

In short, Tendulkar is India's sporting colossus. To find comparisons, you have to cross borders — geographical boundaries, dividing lines represented by eras and borders between vastly different sports — and set eyes on a Pele or a Sampras or a Schumacher.

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