the brook

I am not God.

– Sachin Tendulkar, April 16, 2001

I was winding down work on a regular evening; but I remained glued to my desk following the match on Cricinfo — till the little master got out, disappointingly, before making a century. Nothing remarkable about that, really. Except that I’ve been repeating that pattern in one way or another for most of my conscious life. As Sachin became the leading run-scorer in Test cricket today and crossed 12000 Test runs, I thought it’d be a good time to get back to some blogging.

I’ve watched many cricket matches, and seen my share of written up slogans in the crowd. But the only one I can remember is one which said, “Cricket is religion, Sachin is God”. And yes, every time I watch or follow a Sachin innings, there’s that hope, that expectation, often that certainty, that greatness is about to reveal itself.

There are many great batsmen. Ricky Ponting is a prolific scorer who can attack any bowling with brutal force. Brian Lara’s unforgettable flair and flourish with the bat is unmatched. Rahul Dravid carves his runs out of sheer willpower and pure technique. Sachin, however, emanates runs. At his best, they seem to come not from technique or force or manufactured shots but out of a nothingness, a fountainhead that leads one to the sneaky suspicion that he can somehow bend the fabric of reality.

And on days like today, when he seems unstoppable in his element, he brings to his fans the pure, unencumbered joy that has endeared him to millions from Manchester to Mohali. After all, when God needs to fly, He doesn’t invent airplanes. He merely suspends gravity.

I’ve always been slightly at a loss to explain just why I enjoy watching Sachin Tendulkar bat. Peter Roebuck describes it beautifully in his recent column:

Spectators find in [Tendulkar's batting] the same satisfaction as a mathematician does in a formula. Tendulkar does not indulge himself at the crease. His style is not a style at all, merely his way of scoring runs. Even the apparently cheeky upper cut and the reverse sweep aired yesterday take into account score and field. He calculates and then commits.

Sachin Tendulkar made his 16000th run in one-day internationals today. It just struck me that each run is worth 22 yards (the length of a cricket pitch), and that equates to 200 miles. A long run indeed.

Keep going, Little Master.

Yesterday evening, the nation of India watched yet another display of Just In Time Harakiri™ from their cricket team. The fans’ anger, however, was partly directed at the game’s referees, whose actions a viewer mailed in and charitably described as mentally retarded. Indian authorities and fans have complained bitterly not only to the ICC, but also Human Rights Watch, SightSavers International, Help for the Deaf and Dumb, and about twenty-two million gods and goddesses. It’s quite clear that umpire Steve Bucknor is not winning the Bharat Ratna anytime soon.

Every cloud has a silver lining however, and today ought to find Steve Bucknor smiling from ear to ear. A team of scientists have nominated him for the most prestigious prize in mathematics, the FIELDS (Fatally Idiotic Exhibition of Lousy Decision Schema) Medal. Apparently Stevie compares favourably with comsic gamma rays in at least one respect - generating random numbers.

Picky Ronting (name changed to protect identity), who nominated Steve Bucknor and is clearly in awe of the guy, explained. “True random number generation is one of the hardest challenges in mathematics. The best hope we’ve had so far have been purely physical phenomena - the amplitude generation of cosmic rays, for example. But even they have problems - the folks over at the SETI project keep finding patterns even in these signals and tell us about alien communications. We took a string of decisions given by Steve Bucknor and had the SETI folks run it using their distributed computing network of 50,000 computers, and it turns out his decision-making ability is unique for its pure, unadulterated and utter randomness.”

In a world where reasonable accuracy is so easy, we must applaud Mr. Bucknor for risking his outstanding position for the sake of service to science. Let not a few raised eyebrows stop the randomly raised fingers.

The Fake But Possible News Network asserts that any remote similarity of the events reported to reality is purely coincidental.

After a fighting 192, Kumar Sangakarra fell to one of those increasingly common dismissals these days - umpire error. With more than two sessions to go, the 10th wicket partnership may not last very long but isn’t short on entertainment.

101.5 Clark to Malinga, SIX, Malinga goes downtown. Full in length, Malinga moved outside leg stump and swung it over long-on!

101.4 Clark to Malinga, SIX, Hello?! Malinga has pulled a Clarke delivery over the deep backward square leg! It was dug in short, at the body, Malinga was backing away and he just short-arm jabbed it . up up and over!

101.3 Clark to Malinga, FOUR, bang! four more. Malinga pulls a short-of-length delivery over midwicket

Rediff reports:

Special judge Mohammad Shamim’s order in the matter came on a review petition filed by Rajesh Bidkar against Tendulkar, saying cutting of a ‘Tiranga cake’ by the cricketer was an insult to national pride.

Right. While the left parties band together and hold India’s international reputation to ransom with the US and IAEA, and the toothless Congress which ignores a near war-zone in Nandigram in the sole interest of pushing its own agenda; lets all focus our attention on how Sachin Tendulkar, who’s been an impeccable ambassador of India for eighteen years and counting, insulted national pride by daring to depict the Indian flag in an interesting way.

The men in blue have achieved what we never thought possible.

For the team that truly gave it their all, the men who played out of their skins, the boys who made us proud to be Indian, and the players who showed what having a heart truly means - You Rock!

There are a hundred different things going on in my mind - but the only thing that matters is a hope that this moment lasts forever.

Chak de India!