Why Sachin is God

With all the mourning going on amongst fans at the moment about Sachin’s retirement, some others are questioning the over-the-top press coverage being given. Some cricket ignorants don’t understand what the fuss is all about. You might have thought we were taking fan-following to nonsensical proportions and might have been annoyed at the absurdity of our devotion. Yes, we are devotees and we take an irrational stance when it comes to Sachin. Here’s why.

For most of us, our earliest childhood memories will be times when we were about 4-5 years of age. For many, it was attending school during the day or video games after. For girls, it might have been learning a dance or such. But for most boys then in India, it was playing cricket in the colony park or a nearby playground. 

In those days, we just focused on bringing the bat down in one swift motion and giving an oncoming ball a thwack, or bowling such deliveries that would break the stumps. While batting, we were little concerned about understanding where the fielders were placed and trying to find a gap. While bowling, we never really considered covering a particular batsman’s scoring areas to force him to hit somewhere else. And we never viewed cricket as a team game. We believed we alone could score all the runs while batting and take all the wickets while bowling. Thoughts about fielding was not even on the horizon for most of us. In fact, many would switch off when they weren’t batting or bowling. That was at 5 years of age. The cricket lessons we learned at that stage weren’t permanent ones.

With growing up, came the actual understanding of the game. By the time we turned about 8 years of age and beyond, we began to appreciate the facts we had missed earlier. We understood techniques. We learnt to play the forward defensive. We not only played more cricket amongst ourselves (sometimes under a coach if we had joined a club), but also gained a lot of input from watching cricket matches on TV and the accompanying commentary. We tried reproducing what we learnt from the players and the commentators. While batting, we began looking for gaps in the field. While playing longer matches, we no longer tried to hit 10 runs off each over. ODIs taught us the art of preserving wickets and consolidating during the middle stages, so as to have a go at the end. While bowling, we tried to find out quickly if a batsman liked pace, and subsequently bowled him spin (and vice versa). While fielding, we looked out for the slower of the two batsmen and always targeted his end during direst hits. Most importantly, the concept of the team came into the forefront with the realization that you should have 11 good players rather than 3 excellent ones with 8 scrappy ones. We realised each of us had a job to do if we were to win – someone to consolidate and someone to hit out while batting; someone to press for wickets and someone to keep the scoring down while bowling. The point is, truths of cricket entered our heads when we were 7-14 years of age. We formed our understanding of the game and learnt our life lessons in that period. These truths have been thoroughly entrenched in our minds and most haven’t been removed ever since.

Now, for most of us, this period (when we were truly understanding the game) coincided with the period when Sachin alone bore India on the cricket field (his golden age of the late 1990s). There was this entire duration of a few years when Indian wins against standard opposition came only when Sachin scored, and Indian losses came when Sachin failed. Televisions were turned off if he was dismissed early with people knowing that India had no hope of winning. When Sachin is dismissed, if a dad turns off the TV and tells his kid to go study or play outside, what kind of impression is supposed to form in the mind of the kid? Obviously that Sachin is the be all and end all of the Indian team. This has happened personally to me dozens of times. I remember my mother giving a glance at the TV once in a while and asking me something to the tune of “Sachin has been dismissed. Why are you still watching? Go do your homework.” I would of course not budge and after 20 mins she would be back demanding what I was still doing there.  Then I would be forced to comply, although I would still be back at intervals. During those years, everyone in India believed that we couldn’t win without a Sachin special, and it was mostly true. The issue is, for many of us, this was our first impression of the game.

So, the lesson I learnt in my formative years was that “India is Sachin, and Sachin is India”. Even though it’s a team game for every other country, for India it’s an individual game. He is the one who hits out during the field restrictions, consolidates in the middle stages before opening up again at the end. Whatever be the total we are setting or chasing, only he is capable of achieving it. He is the equivalent of 11 people, and his success or failure determines the success and failure of the country. Thus, he is superhuman. A God. And because my earliest life lesson of the game was this, I have never been able to shake it off. He is still God in my mind. And not just me, all those people whose initial impression of the game was formed in this period regard Sachin as God. Basically, that’s the entire generation born from the mid 1980s to the early 1990s. Obviously, everyone’s story would not mirror mine, but in some way or other, the notion that formed in all of our minds was that India wins with Sachin succeeding and loses with him failing. As a case in point, Virat Kohli, a member of our generation famously remarked “He has carried the hopes of an entire nation on his shoulders for so long……. and it is time we carried him on ours” after the 2011 World Cup Final, and we all praised him to the skies for that.

So, to conclude, please do not judge us ‘devotees’ before standing in our shoes, and Sachin deserves every moment he is getting these days. With all the Gangulys and Dravids and Dhonis and Kohlis who have come in after him and won us matches, our dependence on him has gone down. And we might not see him as powerful as he was in his peak, but still “Cricket is our religion and Sachin is our God”.