FP Tariq Engineer Nov 16, 2013
Forget for a moment the runs. Forget the centuries. Forget the wins and losses, the highs and lows. Instead, consider these two stories.
During his farewell tour of England in 1948, crowds surged to every ground to watch the great Sir Donald Bradman once last time. In those days there were no fences. no police patrolling the boundary and no cable television, so fans would spill over onto the field, often obscuring the boundary rope.
Yet the Don did not warm as easily to his fans off the field. In Brightly Fades the Don, Jack Fingleton recounts a story told by the gossip-writer of the Manchester Evening News, who was trying to interview Bradman. The writer was waiting in the foyer of Bradman’s hotel, alongside “small boys with autograph books”.
“His replies to my two perfectly simple questions – was he well and how did like being back at Old Trafford and Manchester – were completely offhand and, after rebuffing me, he stalked out and drove away, ignoring also the worshipping small boys.”
Contrast this with the story Amrit Mathur, a former manager of the Indian cricket team, tells for ESPNcricinfo. After the 2003 World Cup final that India lost to Australia, the team had to fly home in economy because business class was full. Naturally, the other passengers could not resist coming up to Sachin Tendulkar and asking him for autographs and photographs.
“For the next three hours, Sachin fulfilled every request, even while having dinner, repeatedly putting his fork down to sign something”, Mathur writes. “Strangers patted him on the back, put their arms around him, and grabbed his hand. Not for a moment did he show the slightest hint of irritation. No autograph was refused, no request for a photograph turned down.”
For all the expectations Tendulkar and Bradman faced on the field, they faced almost as many off it. The intensely private Bradman could be brusque, yet from all accounts, Tendulkar was always gracious and patient with his fans. He has even kept the team bus waiting while he has signed autographs, not wanting anyone to go away disappointed.
This not to demean Bradman in any way. It is understandable that there were times when he wanted to be left alone. It is to highlight just how willing Tendulkar was to try and live up to what people expected of him.
It is this ability to shoulder the weight of expectation not just on the field but off it too that separates Tendulkar from the rest. He understood early that this was the price of his talent and he was prepared to pay that price.
At an India Today conclave to celebrate Tendulkar’s career earlier this week, Brian Lara said he went through a “dark time” after making his then world record 375 in a Test against England. He was not prepared for the attention and the scrutiny it brought him. It was only in the latter stages of his career that he learned to cope.
“You have to embrace it. You are an entertainer. People pay money to come through the turnstiles. You can’t shy away from it.”
Tendulkar seemed to embrace it almost from the very beginning. Perhaps, in a way, he benefitted from the attention he received as a school boy. He was never aware of a time when he was not the cynosure of Indian eyes. He learned to handle it in the same way he learned to handle top quality fast bowling.
When the Indian selectors got together to discuss the team for the 1989 tour of Pakistan, selector Naren Tamhane suggested they pick the 16-year-old Tendulkar. But the others worried that the young kid, no more than a boy really, would suffer at the hands of Imran Khan, Waqar Younis, Wasim Akram and Abdul Quadir. The risk of failure was too great, the damage to his confidence potentially too devastating.
Pat came the reply from Tamhane: “Tendulkar never fails.”
Imagine trying to live up to that testimonial while facing the same set of bowlers.
It was no easier from within his inner circle either. “It was not just his dream. It was the dream of the entire family,” his brother Ajit said.
India tennis player Sania Mirza knows a thing or two about media attention. Her career, her form, her clothes and her marriage have alll been dissected in the Indian press. And this in a sport like tennis, which does not have half the fanatic following cricket does. So when she says “Indians are extremists; too much love, too much hate”, she knows what she is talking about.
She tells of conversations with cricketers “who have told me they have fallen sick because of the pressure put on them by the media [and others]. That is very unfair.”
Yet this has never seemed to upset Tendulkar, at least not publicly. Perhaps in his private moments he has expressed concern or even annoyance, but in the glare of the spotlight he has simply smiled and carried on.
Tendulkar handled this in two ways. He has a remarkable abililty to compartmentalise his life. When he walks out to bat at the Wankhede stadium for the last time in a Test match, he will know his fans want to see him make a hundred. But he will not be affected by it.
“Once he walks into the ground, he goes into his zone,” VVS Laxman told NDTV. “He totally shuts off whatever is happening away and just focuses on the task at hand.”
The other was his preparation. He worked harder on his cricket than anyone else, whether it was ironing out flaws, perfecting a new technique or just making sure he stayed in the groove, he never wasted a practice session. Not once did he try to cheat the game.
“When you train at a high level like Sachin does, then it becomes easier to deal with the pressure,” Sushil Kumar, India’s two-time Olympic medal winner in wrestling, said.
It is for this reason that Lara believes Tendulkar has had the greatest cricketing career of anyone to play the game. He has absorbed the unrelenting attention, adulation and expectations of his fans and simply got on with the job.
The day after the Wankhede Test ends, Tendulkar will wake up and for the first time in almost a quarter century, not have to worry about meeting a billion people’s expectations. It will be a strange and unusual feeling for him and there will be a void in his life.
But he will also finally have time to breathe. He has more than earned it.
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