The Real

If someone had told me very early in my life that cricket (or any sport) had a finite life, would I have spent as much time living cricket? I doubt it. While there is no doubt I watched cricket for the pleasure of the lived experience, I am fairly certain that I wouldn't have organized my life around cricket if not for the posterity value of those experiences. But often I tried to encash the posterity value in early.

The easiest trap for a long time sports fan to fall into is the life of the past. Sunny’s straight drive. Sampras’ second serve. Maradona’s magic. It’s not that a fan stays fixed in the bygone. He follows every contemporary game, and quite passionately too. It’s easier to interpret it as the fan wishing for a replication of his peak sporting experience of the past. Maybe, that’s what keeps him going. But often it’s the contrary. He doesn’t want them to replicate. He wants to tell the contemporary fools that they haven't seen the real thing.

To live in the Sachin age is a blessing in many ways. He was the greatest hits collection of batsmanship. He scored runs by the heaps; scored them in different formats and variety of conditions; scored them in the most pristine way. The perfect marriage of outrageous talent and a maniacal devotion to his craft. Master and Student. Obsessor and the obsessed.

But Sachin is also an anti-gift for fans. He didn't let us willingly surrender ourselves to the past. Every time there was a temptation to indulge in wistfulness at the slightest hint of vulnerability, he pulled us out of it. He showed us a new world. It was therapeutic, but in a perverse way it wasn't.

My Dad talks about the precocity of Sandeep Patil taking on Bob Willis as if no other generation will witness anything remotely quite as thrilling. A friend of mine who belongs to the Sunny generation considers it blasphemous to believe any of the contemporary fast bowlers is capable of breaching his defence. Let's not even go near the Viswa and the Viv territory. While I take their claims with a pinch of salt, I am a willing sucker for such stories for they are narrated with utter conviction and a sense of possessive pride. I must have been a sinner not to have been part of that generation...

In a career that lasted nearly a quarter of a century and for the majority of it, offered a baseline of excellence not experienced before in this sport, where was the scope for reflections? The problem with Sachin isn't just that comparisons with the next generation had to wait for so long. It's also that different generations of fans have seen different peaks of Sachin. His fans are also competing with the next generation of his fans.

For someone who was privileged enough to have seen his WACA masterpiece as a teenager, his bragging rights window was too small.

"Kid, you haven't seen anything compared to that WACA innings?"

"Jeez, no way it could have been superior to Cape Town."

''Hmmm. Can't compare the two, you know….''

What is the point of being at Chepauk for his 155 and die a year later? A colossal waste of boasting rights.

Only difference is, being alive doesn't guarantee that either, for he plays another blinder, in fact an even better innings, on the same ground against Pakistan the very next year.

Damn, I can't even claim ''That 155 is peerless man'' without a counter question: ''which one?''

Purely from this perverse perspective, I was glad he had the lean phase towards the end. No more epic match-up against Steyn that put my nostalgia of his duel against the White Lightning at the Wanderers to pastures. Now, I can tell the Kohli generation that they ain't seen anything.

I went to Trent Bridge and was enthralled by a gorgeous cameo in a lost battle. Next stop was at Edgbaston, where an accidental run out brought a promising innings to an early end. I let it rip. When he played here in '96….

I went to Melbourne and watched a mini masterpiece. Bragging rights can go to hell. Sydney special followed. This wasn't going according to the script. He wasn't in cruise mode for sure, but there were sufficient hints of a redemption around the corner.

How much more do I have to wait to encash the posterity value?

Then he scratched around some more. And then Bombay happened. Personally for me, that was that. Monty Panesar outfoxing him twice in the same test was the end of the road.

He teased me one more time with a glorious 81 against Australia at Chepauk in what turned out to be the last time I saw him bat live at the ground.

I wouldn't have invested so heavily in Sachin if someone had told me at the beginning that his career will go on forever.

Finite Sachin. Infinite Cricket. Lifetime of memories of Sachin in Cricket.

Kids, you haven't seen the real thing.