It has been my dream for twenty five years to step onto the Chepauk cricket ground. Every time I have gone there to watch a match, I would secretly pray that they would have left one of the gates open or unguarded, so I could rush into the ground and fall on the grass there. That they would shoot me down with a rifle is a separate story, but I always prayed I would feel a single blade of grass there someday and suddenly my life would gather some meaning.
Yesterday, a friend of mine took me to the MCC club for dinner. I sat in the pavilion and had dinner and then decided that I had had one too many bottles of water and decided to use the restroom. The waiter walked me into the restroom and wait-for-it, it was the restroom inside the player's changing room. This was the place where Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly and VVS Laxman would have sat and changed and stared at themselves in the mirror. The feeling was surreal.
I simply sat down on one of the chairs for a minute to feel the excitement brimming within me. When I walked out, the friend who had brought me for dinner dragged me to a gate and led me out of it. On. To. The. Ground.
I was walking On the cricket ground that Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar had fielded. His four had probably brushed the blade of grass under my foot. This was on the 16th of November. The last day of the last test Sachin had played. Slowly it struck me that Sachin would never step on this ground again. And I rushed back to the restroom and silently wept.
I am not some knowledgeable cricket writer. I am not a guy who can quote every innings of Sachin or remember his pet dog's name. I don't know his life by-heart. I am like one of you. I just love him. I just wholeheartedly love Sachin because that is who he was to me - A complete Indian cricketer. Every time he came to bat, I watched with amazement. I looked at his shot selection, at his ability to soak pressure and his at humility when someone mentioned his greatness.
I have seen enough interpretations of one in movies. Enough actors have tried giving me an enacted representation of it. But in real life, as a man of flesh and blood, Sachin Tendulkar is my hero. He will always inspire me. This is a man who when 40 years old, still played for Mumbai and single-handedly took them to victory. I shall never watch his farewell speech again because it has the word 'farewell' in it. It will remind me that Sachin will never play again. And every time I get reminded of that, I will weep like a baby. For when a hero hangs up his boots, who are we going to look up to again?
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