Sachin ramesh tendulkar- these three words just imply lot of sense to lot of Indians round the globe. I was not a lunatic fan of sachin during my “professional” cricketing days. Infact I went up to arguing with my peers about his inability of not scoring is many crunch games & also playing those big-knocks. Today somehow that feeling is revised & I am feeling lot different in my opinions about this guy. It didn’t come all of sudden just because I saw this new series in espn-star sports named Sachin The legend-His story featuring Naseruddin Shah nor it did when I was watching few special knocks of this guy on Ten sports. In fact I can’t even mention any thing substantial about when I got this feel that he’s a real legend. I know most people have this terminology of using the statistics to discriminate a person. Like in the wonderful hawkeye article about how Indians have this mode of judging a person from his salary slips. I know it is somehow absurd in saying that I only count potential & not performance. But in lots of cases I do consider the potential as to performance. If Marvan Attapatu & Jack Kallis weren’t supported enough by their own boards for a particular period of time they wouldn’t have been where they are rite now. So that doesn’t mean to say that all players have to be supported enough without proper credentials to their names.

The guy whom we are talking about is no Jack Kallis or Marvan Attapattu. This guy is a genius, a legend of his time, only one player among millions of them will be able to achieve this feet. Its not a joke that a former cricketer turns around and calls him “God’s gift to Indian cricket”. But somehow when a player of this caliber is present the world somehow tries to compare him with the second best guy available and the debate over the supremacy comes into question. Yet no one has a real parameter is naming one best among them. I am talking about comparisons between Brain Charles Lara & Sachin Tendulkar.

To be able to distinguish these two cricketers we must first get to the base of the story. Two totally different players, yet having a common trait, the public will love to pay money to watch them play. Having played the game for so many years I cannot figure out a way to get the thing out of mind as to how-not-to-pay-to-watch-a-cricket-game. Yet somehow or someway we end up doing that. From a normal entertaining commodity the game has become a place for corporate battleship today. So this supremacy over the players will come into picture with the advertising & marketing guys ready to poach on the best talents in the world. To keep it simple “Cricket sells, cricketers sell”. If Sachin comes out today says “Boost is the secret of my energy” I knew kids who went up to the supermarkets with their mum to buy Boost. Whether you like it or not this is the truth. But are we really talking about that, are we.

These two players belonged to two different era’s in the same era. I know I don’t make any sense by saying that but what I really mean is the current era can be divided into two, the first era which totally belonged to Sachin & the second which totally belonged to Lara, which doesn’t mean that the other didn’t do equally well. But if you compare the quality of knocks I will put my money on this above statement. Sachin who started as a middle order batsman & went to bat in the top of the order and Lara who started predominantly as a top order or an opening batsman who started batting little down the order. A quality of a person can be only judged under pressure. Its that ability of these two which stand out. But we cannot really compare these extraordinary individuals. If Lara can come out & get a 400 not out to be the first cricketer to achieve this feat, Sachin was no less with a world record amount of tons in test cricket.  

I personally there is not much cricket left in sachin for many reasons. So till the time he is “available” in the scheme of things lets sit back & enjoy this bizarre talent to the core!!!