Sachin Tendulkar- The Man Cricket Loved Back

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

On a sweltering mid-April night in Chennai in 2010, when heat and humidity conspired to turn the human body into a dripping mess, I watched a desperately dehydrating Sachin Tendulkar hit a ball in the air to bring a moment of delicious ambivalence to the ground. Before going further, background and context are necessary. I had travelled to Chennai that day to conduct my version of the Tebbit Test. For those unfamiliar with the term, it refers to the controversial proposition by Norman Tebbit, the British Conservative politician, that immigrants of South Asian and Caribbean origin needed to prove their loyalty to the UK by supporting the England cricket team. My loyalty test was far less pernicious. I wanted to explore whether the IPL's idea of city-based franchises had grown enough for Indian fans to support another team over Sachin Tendulkar.

I chose Chennai because, by all accounts, the local fans had got behind Chennai Super Kings (CSK) with great fervour. To make up for the lack of a local cricketer as their team's icon player, they chose Mahendra Singh Dhoni as their adopted son of the soil, and unlike many other venues, where fans turned up to partake of the merriment and cheered every big hit irrespective of the uniform, spectators at the M Chidambaram stadium had been raucously partisan. It is said that Doug Bollinger, the Australian quick bowler who had a couple of good seasons with CSK, was startled to find his name being chanted. It was a first for him.

But Chennai also enjoyed a special bond with Indian cricket's favourite son. Tendulkar averaged close to 90 in Tests here, his highest among Indian grounds, and many of his memorable Test hundreds, including a heroically tragic 136 against Pakistan in 1999 and a series- turning 155 against Australia, came here. His last hundred at this venue was a last-innings effort, which he brought off with a boundary that also sealed an improbable chase against England. Like the rest of India, Chennai has loved Tendulkar as its own, but on this day that bond was going to be tested against the tide of provincial pride.

Or perhaps not. The Super Kings players got their due. Dhoni received a grand ovation to the crease. They cheered when Mike Hussey's image flashed on the giant screen, and they got behind Bollinger when he ran in to bowl. But through the day, the loudest cheers were reserved for Tendulkar. They cheered him when he strolled out before the toss, they cheered even louder when he was being interviewed on the square, they cheered when he stopped a ball, and they cheered his boundaries with nearly the same enthusiasm as they did those by their own.

But Mumbai Indians had now fallen behind the game. Tendulkar had got the chase off to the perfect start, hitting crisp, risk-free boundaries in the first six overs, but he had to retire ill in the ninth over, which sparked a sensational collapse that forced him to return five overs later with his team six wickets down and the asking rate nearly 13 runs an over, and the rhythm of his innings punctured. And so we rewind to the opening paragraph.