One Last Time - When a non-fan witnessed Sachin Tendulkar's swansong

Sachin Tendulkar walks out to bat in his last Test match

I remember it just as if it were yesterday. It was just one of those days when even if you try very hard to, you won't forget. It was the day me, my father and my uncle flew to Mumbai from Bangalore to watch the greatest cricketer of all time play his last game.

It all seemed like it was a dream. I had heard of crazy fans who travel all across the country to watch matches but never did I think for one minute that I will be one of them. Sachin was consecrated very early in my family; so I guess I had no choice but to follow in their fanatic footsteps. When it was announced that Sachin's last game would be played in Mumbai, the race for tickets started. Call it luck, fate, magic or whatever you believe in, we somehow ended up with 4 tickets for the test match. I don't think even Charlie Bucket protected his Golden Ticket as much as we protected our own.

And so on November 13th, 2013, me, my father and my uncle set off to Mumbai to watch the Master bid adieu to the game. Let me make something clear to the reader before we proceed; I am not a big cricket fan, I prefer the game involving twenty-two men running after a ball to kick it into a net.

Something in the Air

But cricket was an important part of my education at home. I have watched Sachin's straight drive of Shoaib Akhtar ( you know the one I'm talking about) innumerable number of times, and been told about its aesthetic beauty as many times. I liked cricket, but it didn't get my adrenaline pumping as football did.

But, as we walked into Wankhede on the first day of the match, I felt an excitement that is difficult to explain. There was just something in the air; the feeling that all of us gathered here were going to be part of something much bigger than all of us. There was a buzz; a buzz that was quite ineffable. It was impossible not be pumped up for the occasion; I know I was. Hell, I think even Michael Jordan would have been.

The noise in the stadium when 'he' walked out to bat was deafening. Now, I knew that it would be bedlam when he came out to bat, but this was beyond expectation. Every person in the stadium, right from the most phlegmatic to the most strident, screamed themselves hoarse. No words will do justice to this moment. It was a moment only mean to be felt, not written about. It still gives me goosebumps thinking about it. Sachin said in his farewell speech, that 'Sachin, Sachin'! will reverberate in his ears forever; he isn't the only one.

The power of the Little Man

Now this is a man who has scored hundreds in world cups, finals, Test matches against the best bowling attacks in the world but, to me those thirty-odd runs he scored against sub-standard West Indian attack on Day 1 is the innings I will remember him by. Every one of the 40,000 people in the stadium once again fell in love with them man, who had stolen their hearts on countless occasions.

I swear, in that one moment, all of us in the stadium felt as one. We were all united by the Little Man in the middle. The stage was set for him, and boy!, did he give in a performance that drove us all in a frenzy.

With his score at 20, which included three of the most 'Sachin shots', I turned to Dad, and said, ' Now all we need is a classic straight drive, and then we would have seen it all'. God heard our prayers, and the very next ball played a straight drive reminiscent to the one I had watched on my TV so many times. I remember looking up at my father and we both just smiled, no words were needed.