Simply TENDULKAResque...................

I was born roughly two years after Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar made his test debut.Right through my childhood,time and time again,just like one billion Indians ,I have been enthralled by the opus of this seemingly peerless five feet run-conjurer. Just turn the clock by 19 years and I witness the ultimate ODI innings ,this time not at the tranquil environs of my home but a more delirious hostel common room which sends the country into reverberating paraoxysms of elation .Having been a cricket fanatic all my life i just had to pen down my adoration for an individual,who continues to mesmerise timelessly....
Suresh Menon, an Indian cricket writer of repute, had covered Tendulkar’s first tour, in Pakistan in 1989, where he had watched him being hit on the mouth by Waqar Younis — and battle on regardless — and strike Abdul Qadir for several straight sixes. His abiding memory of that tour was of a peculiar complaint of the team manager, the old Indian cricketer, Chandu Borde. Borde had been assigned a hotel room immediately under Tendulkar’s,and had been woken up at dawn each day by the boy knocking practice balls on the floor of his room.
Nevertheless the intensity of the Tendulkar cult in India is about much more than just cricket. In the words of cultural author Mike Marquesse,Tendulkar has always found himself at the epicentre of a rapidly evolving popular culture shaped by the intertwined growth of a consumerist middle class and an increasingly aggressive form of national identity. National aspirations are poured by millions into his every performance. It's a tribute to his strength of personality that he has somehow risen above the swirling incompetence ,the straitjacket of corruption engulfing him and a parasitical media craving for blasphemous sensationalism.

Like Tendulkar, Roger Federer and Tiger Woods(Don't intertwine infidelity with excellence) dominate their chosen sports both statistically and stylistically, and like Tendulkar they are a source of joy to fans of every stripe.Jordan, Woods and Federer may cross more boundaries, but nowhere do their performances carry the weight of expectation that Tendulkar's carry in India (and among the Indian diaspora). Nowhere are they the focus of the kind of fervour that greets Tendulkar when he strides to the crease at Wankhede, Eden Gardens, or the Chidambaram stadium.The above photograph of 8-year olds forming a 200 at school in tribute to Tendulkar's double ton at Gwalior accentuates the essence of our pride in him being an Indian......

Sometimes you can only feel a peculiar sense of sympathy for the other great batsmen of this generation.I was having one of those rare chats with dad the other day and we did agree for once.We discussed whether Ponting was to Tendulkar what Walter Hammond had once been to Don Bradman; a truly great batsman forever condemned by the accident of birth to live (and play) in the shadow of an even greater one.
Like Roger Federer and Tiger Woods, Sachin Tendulkar dominates his sport comprehensively, but unlike them he is the sole focus of an entire nation and its quest for identity.For lovers of sport like me,watching Tendulkar play is so much more....... for it brings with it an unadulterated joy, a joy that transcends human barriers of culture and location,a joy that bears no cultural or nationalist overtones,a joy as someone aptly said is so intimately personal,yet so transparently universal .........

PS: Ayaz Memon writes what I truly view as the definition of Tendulkar's greatness:

If Tendulkar were to retire tomorrow, a long queue of the game's greatest batsmen would await him near the dressing room: Hammond, Hobbs, Hutton, the three Ws, Richards, Gavaskar, Dravid, Sehwag, Ponting, Lara, Chappell, Miandad, et al. And at the head of this queue would be Bradman, first to shake his hand and say, "Gosh you little bonzer, I would have loved to play an innings like that!"