When you
worship a man for 22 years it goes without saying how important or special he
is to you. I shall thus deliberately not state here as to how much and why I look
up to Sachin Tendulkar. I shall instead state a more relevant observation of
mine which will help me elaborate the point I am setting out to make!
My
observation that emerged in 1997 was that -“Sachin is the class scholar and could not be the class monitor.”
It was
at the time when Sachin; after a disastrous stint as a captain had decided to
step down. I still remember how upset and stressed he used to be as a captain
and how profusely the losses seemed to affect him.
Here
is where my observation came from-
Almost
every class in school had a student who was studious and came first in every
exam. As opposed to that there would be another student who would never come
first but was above average and was the class monitor. While the ‘scholar’ was
good and diligent at his studies, the class monitor was capable of holding the
class’s attention and managing other admin work.
It was
my first glimpse into the human-ness of ‘Sachin Tendulkar’. I realized how Sachin took everything
personally, wanting to make all the difference himself and how poor he was at
marshaling his resources. This however, took nothing away from him being the
best batsman. But I knew then, as time would prove, that while the class
monitors changed from Azhar to Ganguly to Dravid to Dhoni… the class scholar
would stay focused and excel. Sachin could not take responsibility as multi
tasking distracted him from his task at hand.
The
second such observation came when through the entire murkiness of the betting
and fixing that Indian cricket went through, defaming some of the icons of the
game and bringing it considerable disrepute. Sachin did not say a letter! His
silence earned him the dignity he was to maintain till date but again His
silence only confirmed the non confrontational nature of his personality. It
was evident that his focus was his own game. He did not want to get involved in
anything else.
He was,
as Ravi Shastry put it, “…born to play cricket and go back.” That was what he
was meant to do!
Hence,
last week when he accepted to be a member of parliament, I was stunned.
For,
anyone who has observed him over the years, it was a move that stood contrary
to everything Sachin had represented all these years.
Politics,
leadership, multi-tasking and confrontation were all virtues that Sachin had stayed
away from even when they were related to the game he loved and lived! And now
to see him take on those very same virtues off the field makes one wonder…
Thus, my
negative reaction to this development is only because of my fear that he might
not damage some of the integrity and respect that he has gathered over years of
being silent and aloof to various things… like above.
