A single Indian victory brings in harmony. A single Indian loss brings
in anarchy. As the estranged love affair between media and cricket
continues, the normal cricket fan is put under the pressure to
differentiate his thought from what he feels and what he is made to
feel. Why is that, on a spin friendly track, the entire focus has been
made to shift from the poor showing of the spinners to the poor showing
of a single batsman? A frail hearted cricket fan might have got
consumed, with media butchering an inimitable cricket legend in the name
of Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar. The average fan might feel that, Sachin's
off-field defense is getting as scratchy as his on-field defense. But
hold I'm no diplomat, I'm a cricket fan & Sachin Tendulkar is my
god. 
Any belief worth having must survive doubt. My belief on
Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar has not only survived doubt, but has also
managed to massacre it. Its not because he's got the numbers behind him,
but its a simple fact that, he's thought us on how one person can carry
the hopes of a billion people over a decade or two. Every single day of
his life there are expectations. And no one can be blamed for that
apart from himself. He has set the standard sky high, that even a small
error looks magnificent. Even while so much is happening around him, it
is so easy for a person to get consumed by the situation. But all this
man does is, walk up to the nets without paying much heed to the hoopla,
knock a few deliveries with pristine concentration. Often the question
arises, "Why does he still have to play cricket? He's achieved every
single thing possible!." The answer I'd give to that is, he's still
learning and he will always continue to learn. Being a keen student of
the game you love the most, throws age out of equation.
To be
fair, he knows the value of this game much more than any cricketer who
has ever played this game. The value is just not about the sport and how
it is played. The value of it is how much you are able to carry apart
from just a sport. Often people and pundits wonder, why Sachin is not
treated the same way, other legends were treated from other countries.
To put things under perspective, Cricket is a sport across the globe,
but not in India. It is a religion here. A healthy percentage of the
billion population, under any circumstance will have something or the
other to chat about cricket, every single day of their lives. When it is
considered as a religion, everybody consumes it. You can't help it if
cricket is more emotional than rational in our country. Every cricket
follower in India, is just not a fan, he's a captain, he's a selector,
he's an umpire, he's a fielder, he's the referee, he's the curator and
he assumes almost every singe role available in the sport. With almost a
billion people like this in our country, spare a thought the amount of
pressure that is stuffed on a single personality, each and every time he
walks into the field. A good part of his career, he's carried the
weight of a billion, no other
sportsperson in any sport in the world has manage to do that. Ganguly,
Dravid, Laxman and many other contemporaries are no doubt legends, but
they did not carry the same baggage or the expectation that Sachin
carried all these years every single time he stepped onto the cricket
field. 
How many times have there been emotional uproars
during the midst of an important cricketing series? But why is there
such a mood swing in the cricket fan's mind? A century can make you
glitter over night and a failure can make you look worse than a puff of
dust. Like Krisnamachari Srikkanth rightly put it, why would you want to
postmortem a performance even before its completely so openly? Why
would you want to make yourself susceptible to unwarranted criticism?
Along with the soup, the media needs just a spark of warmth to ignite
the entire situation and elevate it to an altogether new level. Their
concern is morphed with commercialism. Their debates are like what the
Joker says in Dark Knight - "I know why you decide to have you little
"group therapy" sessions in broad day light." Ultimately you've got to
be sensitive to the situation and see what is on top of the priority
list to discuss. Whether its an entire team failing to live upto the
expectations or the focus needs to be shifted to a legend having an
elongated rough patch in the climatic stages of his career. 
Sachin
Tendulkar himself has recently stated that htere is not much cricket
left in him. He might be god on the field, but he's still a human off
the field. He has come to terms that the final stages of his razzmatazz
filled cricket career is coming to a close. You've just got to give him
his time. You may wonder, why other players were asked to leave
unceremoniously? Is Sachin so special? The answer to that is an obvious
YES! Sachin is special. He's just not another cricketer. The problem
people are identifying with Sachin is that he's growing old and he's
thereby holding the position of an upcoming talent. Which cricketer
doesn't have a rough patch in their lives? Sahcin's has been treated as
god all these years, and people are not able to accept when god makes a
human error. That is the dilemma between the heart and the mind. Without
getting too emotional about this, lets take it by the step. Coming to
terms with the current Indian batting set up, India are a batsman driven
team. But who are the people in form? Gambhir - No. Sehwag - No. Pujara
- Yes. Kohli - almost Yes. Yuvraj - No. Sachin - No. Dhoni - No. So
technically you are just talking about 2 people in prime form, and this
stage a wise cricket fan would back experience than to try something out
of the box and lose even the little respect that is still hinging on
the famed batting line up.
Sachin Tendulkar, you either love him
or hate him. If you love him, keep the faith. If you hate him, keep the
doubt. Both of these feelings are bound to bring back the best from
him. Lets not drive him to an unceremonious retirement. Atleast he
deserves to be sent of in style. A lot of questions have been raised
about the selectors role in such a situation. Its not the question of
the selectors having the guts to go and talk it out with Sachin
Tendulkar, but its just that they unanimously believe that he's a player
of such capability, who will take a call on his own when the time is
ripe. A lot may call this the timidness of the selectors, but full marks
to them if they have respected the decision making power of a single
individual, thats the only tribute that they can provide this living
legend. Frankly no one can push him to retirement or change his fate.
Only he has the capability to decide his own fate, because he has
written it all by himself till date.
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