I am fielding at long-off. That's weird. I don't play cricket. In fact, I hate the game. This must be a dream. Wait a minute, it's Sachin Tendulkar on strike. Okay! It surely is a dream then. I look around the stadium. Now I get it. It's Sachin's last cricket match in all forms of cricket. And this is his last innings. Wow! I can't imagine this day has come. And I've got front row seats to the grandest finale cricket has ever seen.
The bowler sends in a top spinner. Sachin comes down the track to meet it and whips it straight down the ground. It's a top edge that rocketed high into the sky and starts falling down towards me inside the boundary line. The entire stadium has gone silent.
Sachin Tendulkar is the most famous cricket player in Indian history. He's the most loved and worshipped player by Indians all over the country in any sport, and I don't need statistical evidence to prove that statement. He started his international cricket career for India at the age of 16. That's two years under the legal age to drive a car and vote in elections in the country. That means he started playing for our country even before he became a man. Today he's 40 years old. That's a humungous career. And what a career that has been.
Sachin has played some amazing matches in his day. He has broken almost all the batting records in international cricket, and set a few that will not be broken in a long time to come. But I'm not going to go through any of those numbers here because they don't matter. For me, it's the memories that matter. And my dearest one is the 1998 Sharjah Cup semi-final when India was chasing a huge score set by Australia. We haven't qualified for the final yet and needed to reach a particular score in order to make the required run-rate to overthrow New Zealand as the team to meet Australia in the grand-final. That innings, later dubbed as the "sandstorm innings" where Sachin stood still in the middle of the pitch while a desert sandstorm hit the stadium midway through his innings, waiting for it to subside so that he can continue with his own run-storm was the best innings he has ever played. He helped India qualify for the finals, but kept going in order to win the match with such ferocity that the Australians were literally shivering with fear. He was later dismissed wrongly and we went on to lose the match even after coming so close. But after seeing his batting display, I and everybody else who watched that game that day knew what was going to happen two days later in the finals. I bet even the Australians did.
Sachin has many qualities that make him stand out amongst his peers. He is talented, passionate, hard-working and honest. But what made him stay at the top for such a long time is his biggest quality of all - humility. And that's what keeps him in the hearts and prayers of a billion souls on the planet. Not a lot of public figures have that quality anymore, and with Sachin gone, that's one thing I'm surely going to miss.
I move a few steps to my side trying to get under the ball. The ball drops right into my hands and stays there. I'm gutted. I look across towards the pitch and sees Sachin at the crease, looking at me, realising that I haven't dropped the catch. Then he looks up and raises his bat to the sky, and walks towards the pavilion for one last time. I look at the ball in my hand, fall to the ground and start crying. The entire stadium has erupted with emotion, to say farewell to their God.
I woke up from my dream and realise that it's late in the night. It's the year 2011 and I'm in my Bangalore apartment. I looked over to my side and see T sleeping. I touched my face and felt tears down my cheeks. I turned around and thought about the day Sachin retires from cricket. Maybe next year. Or the year after that. That day is getting closer. I lay there crying for an hour thinking about that dreadful day before I finally fell asleep.
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