Well TON Sachin!

It will be unfair to compare Sachin with God today. Yes, He is good and all that but He is nowhere close to Tendulkar or his feat. In this context, when 38-year-old Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar turned 100 at the Sher-e-Bangla stadium at Mirpur in Bangladesh this Friday, it was sad to see that there was more relief than happiness on the master’s face.

Considering that the maestro, his fans, family and nation, not to mention the globe at large, was recording not just cricket’s but world sports’ OMG! moment, you can call his muted reaction to the feat this century’s biggest understatement!

Indeed, the 100x100 punctuation came after a long sentence, but it is a moment that will take a century or more, if ever, to brook even a whiff of competition. It is a mindboggling achievement, so what if it came after a mindboggling wait — in exactly 370 days and 33 innings after he scored his 99th ton in a World Cup match against South Africa on March 12, 2011 at Nagpur.

Yes, it will weigh on the great man’s mind for a long time that his unparalleled achievement could not come against better opposition like England and Australia, that he had to undergo an agonising break in form to get to something he had done 99 times before and in such great style, that the expectations weighed him down, that he lost peace of mind and weight of body over something that was only an eventuality in public mind. But it is an achievement so great that all niggles get dwarfed by the magnitude of the milestone. It is quite an outstanding milestone, indeed! For, Tendulkar’s 100th century is not just about a mountain of runs no one can ever get to the summit of. It is more about the superhuman aura it comes along with. It is about a rare kind of longevity that Sachin displayed for sporting careers of all hues to envy yet emulate. It is about a rarest of rare strain of excellence. It is about a performance index that has spiralled on a celestial potion. It is about superhuman persistence, perseverance, posterity, polish and patience. It is also about unmatched physical fitness and mental strength.

Sachin’s 23 years of relentless conquest of the game and his gentle determination to never say die, his negligible breaks in form as he undertook the 16 to 38 journey, and his singular dominance of the bat would have corrupted a lesser mortal to becoming a symbol of pomp and show, of arrogance and brashness. But it is to Sachin’s credit, and the value system that is him, that he managed to cordon off his aggression only to the piling up of runs. Off the field, and even in the thick of it all, he is the best gentleman of a game he worships, and a religion he himself is.

Today, let us not think of heartbreaking possibilities of this greatest ever man calling it quits after his 100th 100. Let us not think that he may not be opening one-day innings any more. Let us not think of his absence from the middle which is as much an eventuality of his eventful reign as his 100th century was. Let us just enjoy his presence on the field as long as he deigns to shower this privilege on us mortals. For when God is at play, it is happy hour. When he decides to walk, you might just feel orphaned.

Source: The Pioneer, New Delhi, Date: 17, March 2012.