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END-ulkar

Legend says tearful goodbye to cricket

Sakeb Subhan
It is almost impossible to say something final about Sachin Tendulkar as he walks off into the sunset leaving behind a career decorated with 34,347 runs and a century of international centuries. But that is the need of the hour as the cricket career that has been a part of even the most casual cricket fan's life over the past 24 years came to a close yesterday with India's innings and 126-run thrashing ofWest Indies in Mumbai.
It is near impossible because as cricket followers we have
always been told what to think of him. He has undoubtedly been the most-discussed cricketer, if not sportsman, on the planet. At the centre of so much discussion, criticism and hero-worship he carried on piling hundred upon hundred, reinventing himself time and again while maintaining his fitness and discipline.
At such times the inevitable question is how Tendulkar will be remembered. Will it be as a batsman who in his pomp dominated the likes of Shane Warne, Allan Donald, Shoaib
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Akhtar and bested bowlers of the calibre of Curtly Ambrose, Courtney Walsh, Glenn McGrath, Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis and more recently, Dale Steyn? Will it be as a batsman who reserved his best for the best team of the era -Australia? Or will it be as a cricketer who never shied away from taking the effort to reinvent and reorganise his game to create a self-styled template for run-scoring even as times changed, as they must over 24 years?
Perhaps it is time to take off the lens of cricket followers and examine what he might have meant to those whose interest in cricket and Tendulkar borders on indifference. His retirement has seen an unprecedented outpouring of sentiment on the online social networks of Facebook and Twitter, and not just from Indians. Why this universal appeal? What has ended for them as Tendulkar's career ends?
By playing 200 Test matches and 463 ODIs over 24 years and being at the top of international batsmanship almost throughout, Tendulkar has tapped into that one universal urge among all sentient beings - that of defeating time. Of course he has not in fact defeated time but he did hold off time's grip on his shoulders for longer than anyone has managed. His inexorable march from one run-scoring record to the next reassured people that it is possible to extend oneself beyond previously imagined boundaries if there was will and above all, love for one's profession. Beneath these qualities were many others - his humility in the face of insane hero-worship and his undying respect for the craft at hand, which he strove painstakingly to elevate to a state of near perfection. In this Tendulkar's influence and inspiration transcends not only cricket, but all of sport.
With his retirement that inexorable march has stopped. The number will remain 34,347 - not a single run more. Just as when his great rival and the other modern batting colossus Brian Lara retired, cricket and its followers lost the opportunity to aspire. With Lara's departure perhaps there would be no more reaching for new realms of human achievement - his 400 in a Test innings is the final word. So with Tendulkar's exit ends the story of the boy who at the age of 16 embarked on a battle with time and pummelled that cruel taskmaster for the best part of a quarter-century. We should be thankful that he fought, and that too with such integrity.