5 things India will miss in the post-Sachin Tendulkar era

2. The inspiration that he was

The team will surely miss his experience and guidance. It is every young cricketer’s dream to play alongside him, and almost the whole team looked up to him for inspiration. After all, he was a veteran of the game for most of his career, since after 10 years of cricket behind you can be called one. That way, he was a veteran for 14 years! This is what TIME magazine had to say about this man’s experience:

“When Sachin Tendulkar traveled to Pakistan to face one of the finest bowling attacks ever assembled in cricket, Michael Schumacher was yet to race a F1 car, Lance Armstrong had never been to the Tour de France, Diego Maradona was still the captain of a world champion Argentina team, Pete Sampras had never won a Grand Slam.

When Tendulkar embarked on a glorious career taming Imran and company, Roger Federer was a name unheard of; Lionel Messi was in his nappies, Usain Bolt was an unknown kid in the Jamaican backwaters. The Berlin Wall was still intact, USSR was one big, big country, and Dr Manmohan Singh was yet to “open” the Nehruvian economy. It seems while Time was having his toll on every individual on the face of this planet, he excused one man. Time stands frozen in front of Sachin Tendulkar. We have had champions, we have had legends, but we have never had another Sachin Tendulkar and we never will.”

It is as if Tendulkar has been part of the game forever. And so, he was the best person to look up to for any advice regarding any situation of the game, as he himself has been taught by experience which is the best teacher. He will greatly be missed in those team meetings on the field that happen during critical stages of a game.

Not only that, his commitment towards fielding even at this age is a treat to watch. Never has anyone associated Sachin with poor fielding, even till today when he retired at the age of 39. It was a morale booster for the team whenever they saw him running with all his might just to collect the ball inside the boundary and save a run for the team. Such displays of commitment that are a lesson for everybody else on the field, shall be missed greatly.

1. His presence

BBC on Sachin: “Beneath the helmet, under that unruly curly hair, inside the cranium, there is something we don’t know, something beyond scientific measure. Something that allows him to soar, to roam a territory of sport that, forget us, even those who are gifted enough to play alongside him cannot even fathom. When he goes out to bat, people switch on their television sets and switch off their lives.”

His presence, and the effect that it had on everyone around him or on those watching him on television, will be hard to recreate. When Sachin is present on your side, you could never feel wrong. You felt complete. From the fellow player in the team bus to those who shared the dressing room with the great man, all of them will vouch for the fact that his presence added a new dimension of feelings altogether within everyone.Any debutant would feel that his dream has come true if he could be a part of a match that Sachin played. That is true even for players from sides that he played against. One almost feels sorry for the future debutants because they will ever get a chance to play alongside him.

Almost all players of his time including big names like Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly, Anil Kumble, Steve Waugh, Matthew Hayden, Andrew Flintoff, Wasim Akram and Allan Donald have said that it was a privilege having played with or against him. Players have felt honoured bowling to him, sharing the team huddle with him and even having practiced in the nets with him. Those who have built batting partnerships with him have thanked the stars for the opportunity.

So much respect was hardly commanded by anyone else during his time. It was a different environment altogether whenever the great man was batting, bowling or even fielding the ball. It was as if everyone (including players on the field) looked on in awe as the genius went about his work. All this has been taken out of cricket in the wink of an eye with his retirement.

There are so many things that his presence created. Every time he walked out to bat, the crowd would stand and applaud, and that was true for almost any ground in the world, mind you. This kind of admiration and fan-following was neither created by anyone else, nor can be expected by any player in the future. There were instances when the overseas crowd wanted a game which their side would win but would have a Sachin ton. It was almost a novelty, perhaps the best thing you could witness on a cricket pitch, a Sachin hundred. People who did witness it live felt that they had got back their money’s worth many times over.

Such was the aura that he created with his presence, that Hashim Amla once remarked, “Nothing bad can happen to us if we’re on a plane in India with Sachin Tendulkar on it.”