Sachin Tendulkar exhibition of a different kind

When it comes to sports, there are fans. And, there are fanatics. When it comes to Sachin Tendulkar, Chirag Doshi is a cut above the rest. Keeping an exhibition for the ninth year running to display the Little Master's pictures, articles and a stats book with every innings mentioned only tells you how crazy Doshi is about the man popularly referred to as 'God'.

Step into a room at the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Technology, Andheri, and all that one sees are countless pictures and newspaper cuttings of Tendulkar along with a video clipping of his unbeaten 200 against South Africa. But it is Doshi's stats book that tells you how crazy he is about the Master Blaster. If you wanted to know a month-by-month record of Tendulkar's runs in ODIs, Doshi opens to chapter No. 39. From months, we come to days and it's Sundays where Tendulkar seems to be the best in ODIs with 3,971 runs.

From runs per year, to series by series to different batting positions, Doshi has it all. "It has taken me a lot of time to collect these stats. This is something that you won't find anywhere else. Right from his first Test innings (1989 vs Pakistan) to the last one in Mumbai (2013 vs West Indies), I have not left out anything," said Doshi, who started maintaining an innings by innings account since 2003. "Come, I'll show you DNA's front page article which carried his picture when we won the World Cup ('We Rule', April 3, 2011). I knew the dates of the matches in advance, so all I had to do was tally the scores and stats before and after the innings, it became a habit over time," said Doshi, who suffers from night blindness.

Shravan Mehra, student of an engineering institute, was one of the many to visit Doshi's exhibition. "We were lucky to see him bat. He's left us with so many memories. Seeing someone display these memories shows how much Tendulkar is loved. His stats book is something that only a die-hard fan can come up with," says Mehra.

Doshi's love affair with Tendulkar began when he was seven. "My first memory of Tendulkar was at the 1996 World Cup. My father was an ardent cricket fan and I remember him missing work to see the India-Pakistan match. Two years later and I got to see 'Desert Storm', those two innings in Sharjah changed everything for me. You should come home and see how many cut outs I've got. I couldn't have got everything here. There's not that much space," said Doshi, who has more than 9,000 photographs of Tendulkar from newspapers and magazines.

For Doshi, November 15, 2013 will be a day he'll never forget. "I wanted to see him play for the last time. I got a ticket, thanks to a Mumbai Cricket Association umpire. Despite it being his last innings, he played with the energy and enthusiasm of a child. I had tears in my eyes when I saw him walk back to the pavilion for the last time. There would be no writing in my book after that day. It came to an end."

Despite studying human resources, Doshi's first love is statistics. "I gave my MCA scoring exam last July. I'm yet to receive my result. I'm in love with numbers and cricket, and I'm really hoping this clicks," said the Kandivli resident who plans to do 'something special' for Tendulkar's birthday on April 24. "I've never met him in person. I hope it's this year."

There will never be another Sachin Tendulkar, but Doshi felt that it's tough for the modern fan to be as crazy as him and do what he does. "No one comes close to Tendulkar. The records and stats speak for themselves," he said. "One could make a statistic book on Jacques Kallis. That'll be really worth doing as he wasn't just good in batting. One of the best all-rounders of the modern game. Sachin took a lot of time off me," said Doshi.
The exhibition concludes on Wednesday.