Sachin Tendulkar: The last act

Sachin Tendulkar’s most famous fan, Sudhir Gautam, (yes, the one with body paint and all) blew his conch shell and the sonic blasts reverberated through the cauldron that is Wankhede Stadium. It was not synchronised but soon out stepped the batsman, on whom the whole country is focused, and climbed down the long flight of stairs leading from the dressing room.

The stadium here is no Colosseum and Tendulkar is no gladiator. Yet the entry of the legend after the resonating ‘battle horn’ somehow fit in with the mood the motley crowd here was expecting.

It doesn’t matter that Gautam was performing for the benefit of a foreign TV channel. It doesn’t matter that there were long queues of people outside the stadium hoping to buy a ticket, which they will not get but yet were periodically expanding their lungs to exhale with the famous “Sachin... Sachin” cry.

What matters, however, is that five days from now, Tendulkar will hang his boots up and the world will be divided between those who have seen him bat live and those who haven’t. Meanwhile, there is hope that in these five days, he will (hopefully) bat twice in the match. It is the final pickings of crumbs for the fans who have been sumptuously fed for more than two decades. And to those, for whom his retirement hasn’t sunk in yet, this is it.

On the eve of the second Test against the West Indies, which will be Tendulkar’s 200th and last, the man climbed down the stairs from the pavilion with as much ease as he has done the last 199 times. If his feet were weighed down by emotions, it wasn’t apparent. The cherubic smile and the warmth with which he greeted fans, who stretched their hands painfully through the grill to grab the moment, must have made it worth the effort.

He was carrying a pair of bats and they appeared light in the hands of a man whose shoulders are used to carrying the burden of millions of expectations. It is unlikely any of the conch call, the din of fans, his name echoing in the stadium, or the footfalls of photographers rushing to preserve a slice of history disturbed him. If anything, he is used to all this.

Entering the ground, he spent time talking with groundsmen and even posed for pictures with them. Some of them have seen him take baby steps into cricket. They have spent the past 25 days preparing the ground for his farewell. Tendulkar accepted a bouquet from them and thanked them.

Then cricket took over. And everything returned to normalcy. He batted in the nets with the usual prudence and perfection. First, he faced pacers and then, on another pitch, he faced a net bowler who churned out off-spinners. He spent a lot of time talking to this particular youngster. Shane Shillingford effect? Perhaps.

After batting, for a while, Tendulkar sat in a chair near the nets and appeared deep in thought. Many greats have said that when they are a part of history being made, the images from their life flash in their mind like a slide show. Did Tendulkar see 24 years of his career flash by? We will never know.

He picked up his bats and walked back to climb the long flight up to the dressing room with Gautam’s sonorous ‘Bharat mata ki jai’ in the background.

Meanwhile, the stadium is being punctuated with Tendulkar hoardings and the country is in a mood to make the best of the occasion in whatever way possible.

Before he entered the dressing room, Tendulkar turned around and looked at the ground. Amidst all the frenzy, if there is one part that has remained untouched, it is this ground. And Tendulkar knows more than anybody else that it is here that he can make his swansong memorable.

Everything else, for him, is a mere prop.