There is growing consensus among historians and scholars that Sachin Tendulkar will out last the British monarchy. There are many among the community who believe that the Queen of England take lessons from Sachin Tendulkar if she wishes to enjoy the same kind of love and affection among her subjects that Sachin enjoys.
Sachin experts also think that much like the seed of scoring 100 100s was planted by John Wright in Sachin's mind, Virendra Sehwag's 'cricketers can retire at 30 or 60' may have done a similar trick. While there is every possibility that Sachin Tendulkar will play till he is 60, whether the British monarchy will last that long is not as assured....unless the monarchy is willing to learn some lessons from Sachin.
The Queen herself is well aware of this. Sources close to the Queen reveal how Her Majesty always talks about India's relationship with 'individual exploits' being similar to the British people's fascination with the monarchy.
Known to be a cricket buff herself, she held a secret admiration for Sir Donald Bradman. She has followed Sachin's career very closely and in a private conversations with her staff (often while watching live cricket, albiet on pirated video streams of Sachin's games) she has wondered aloud how Sachin has mantained his humility even as he has grown to mouth the kind of dialogues Amitabh Bacchan used to boastfully mouth in the movies of the 80s.
It is rumored that her recent diary entry read something like this...
"Today after I read Sachin's muted but distinctly angry responses in the media on his 100th, I had the same goose bumps when I saw Amitabh Bacchan in Zanjeer and many other movies. However while Amit was being Amit, boastful and over-the-top, Sachin was being humble as ever. It was humble, unsure anger"
She further wrote...
"Sachin may have scored a 100 100s but I have witnessed close to a 1000 100s including all of Bradman's 29 and never before have I seen a more selfish 100 than the one Sachin scored against Bangladesh. Yes, this is including all of Geoff Boycott's 100s as well.
Yet Sachin has earned enough respect with his subjects that he can come in front of the media the next day and suggest that he is being selfless in not retiring. His aimlessly meandering, career is begining to resemble a bollywood movie gone horribly wrong. Yet, he implicitly called Imran Khan and Sunil Gavaskar selfish and no one, not even a single Pakistani objected to it.
I must learn from him.
How can I get my subjects to respond to me the same way Indians respond to Sachin. The man's a genius. Thousands of years of monarchy and I feel we need to learn from him to survive"
2 comments:
"Retiring would be selfish". This is Orwellian. The next milestone is 40 years of age, then 25 years of cricket and 200 test matches and then 250 test matches and then 20,000 test runs etc....Did he say winning in Australia, beating South Africa and Sri Lanka...Nah...doesn't matter..
The reporters should have asked him, if it was ok for the selectors to drop him if he was out of form. Since he has declared that he is not going to drop himself.
Did we say he was humble?
How much more can I agree with the post itself and then the first part of Vidooshak's comment !
Retirements are for Clerks; Tendulkar will just move on from one milestone to another. In fact he will probably go down as "Milestone Man"; the latest in the evolution of Homo sapiens !
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