TALES OF TRAVESTY
DR. JITENDRA SINGH
His arrival was a departure from the cricket phenotype of 1960’s and 70’s. He was short-statured with unimpressive looks, quite in contrast to cricketing princes like the Nawab of Pataudi. He was hardly suave and handsome like Farook Engineer, the dashing poster boy of the then popular hair applicant “Brylcreem”. He did not possess the majestic gait of Salim Durani whose royal mannerisms fetched him a couple of film roles as a hero including a much talked about one opposite Rehana Sultan.He had no claims to be a man of letters like Sunil Gavaskar who went on to be author of a series of books. He was not blessed with a rustic physical frame like Kapil Dev which fitted appropriately in the advertisement of a shaving cream using a heavy Punjabi accent slogan “Palmolive Da Jawab Nahin ”.
The question , then is, what made this youngster with an ordinary persona click? Sachin Tendulkar will remain a subject of research for generations of scholars to come. It is not simply the story of a cricket legend but symbolic of a neo-generation phenomenon that went beyond cricket.
Sachin truly heralded the arrival of a new generation youth who is highly focused, totally undistracted , tirelessely competitive and absolutely unaffected by extraneous attributes of physical appearance or glamour. Providentially, Sachin’s initiation into professional cricket matched in timing with India’s initiation into new vistas of hi-tech world and global opportunity. It was also precisely the time when the new generation Indian youth, unlike his forefathers, accepted the challenge to take on peers from across the world and prove his ability to be one-up. While Sachin passionately pursued this single-minded goal in the field of cricket, he was inadvertently inspiring every other Indian youth of his age to devote himself or herself with equal single-mindedness to each one’s chosen area of pursuit… be it computer, Information technology (IT), Space technology, literature or medical research .
It is no ordinary coincidence that at the turn of 20th century when Sachin Tendulkar was breaking all the world records in cricket, many of his contemporary youth were also making a mark internationally in their respective fields…Sunita Williams as an astronaut, Vikram Seth as an English novelist, AR Rehman as an Oscar winning musician … to name only a few. If India of mid 20th century produced middle aged world icons like Mahatma Gandhi and Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan, the last decade of 20th century threw up youth world icons led by Sachin Tendulkar.
Be that as it may, Sachin Tendulkar has gone down in the history for eternity but the “legend” went beyond cricket. It is difficult to predict about long-term future but in the immediate future and in our lifetime, it is unlikely that another Sachin Tendulkar will descend on this planet, as Umapathy exclaims with a Ghalib phrase “…Kuchh Aur Zinda Rahte, Tera Intezaar Hota!”
Follow our WhatsApp channel