Being a Sachin fan

Being Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar must not be easy.

It is never easy handling the expectations of a billion people each time you go on to bat – as Proximo had spoken of a Gladiator – “people watching every movement of your sword, willing you to make the killer blow. The silence before you strike, and the noise afterwards, it rises, rises up like…like…like a storm, as if you were the Thunder God himself.“ It is not easy when your dedication and determination are judged and questioned every single time. It is not easy when your every failure is dissected and every movement is scrutinized – and joked about. It is also not easy when every little success is blown out of proportion too.

Some people spend their entire lives wanting to become pilots, engineers or doctors. But for some, being a Sachin fan is enough.

But, it is not easy being a Sachin fan either.

It is impossible to convince people that a Sachin fan can get goose bumps watching a VVS special, and is ready to give up a limb to watch Dravid play perform mesmerize. Yes you heard it – being a Sachin fan does not automatically qualify one as a hater of other world class batsmen.

It is never easy when you have to go through hundreds of posts, comments and tweets questioning his very commitment to the team. Selfish and jinxed, they say. It is not easy when he is blamed for a defeat, only because he scored a century. There is only so much one man can do. There was a time in the 90’s when he was the only one who constituted Indian batting. As a popular comic had so aptly put it, “Sachin’s position in the team has become like the panel separating urinals in a public male bathroom. You remove it, look around and all you see is a bunch of di**s.”

It is not easy being a Sachin fan because despite all this, they still reserve their blame only for him. They even adorn their views with meaningless lop-sided stats. Writing an article in his criticism has become the easiest way to generate page views. It is not easy being trolled in, and trolling every such article and comment.

It is not easy when articles hoping to eulogize every other great cricketer pull out any one yardstick and show how the cricketer in question fares better than Sachin in that one respect. There can be no bigger insult to the greats, and there can be no better compliment to the great.

It is not easy being a Sachin fan. Sometimes you hate yourself for it. It is not easy because when a Sehwag nears a double ton in ODIs, a certain part of you does not want him to pull off the heist. For some reason one can never hope to justify, a certain corner of your heart wants that pedestal to be occupied only by him – you consider the pedestal to be sacred.

But it all becomes worthwhile when he plays that one straight drive, or pulls out that impossible looking late cut, or some other shot only he can play – shots which style and panache stamped all over it – and incredulity. As Rohit Brijnath had once said, he could well play these shots wearing a tuxedo, and he still won’t manage to look any better.

And then there is the debate about him being Divine. Well, I can only quote what Stuart Chase had remarked about God, to end all theist-atheist debates: “For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don’t believe, no proof is possible”.