sachin and dravid

The five ageing leaves of Indian cricket: Tendulkar, Dravid, Ganguly, Laxman and Kumble. Five leaves in autumn, braving the winds of change that are blowing. Look! Two of them are falling. Oh how graciously they fall. In this journey, so short, from the branch to the ground, how they wear a final beauty. And despite the terror of mixing with the earth, want that this last fall has all the grace of a flight!

Kumble’s 18-year-old journey came to an end at the Feroze Shah Kotla and Ganguly is bidding adieu at Nagpur as he follows suit, floating down gently, savouring every memory of a long life on a branch of Indian cricket. They have weathered storms of all kinds and have emerged scathed, tired, tested but ultimately, I’d like to believe, satisfied. It will take long to fill the gaps they have left and the branches look that much emptier and poorer by their absence.

In a few years, the remaining three will also be blown away and the branch will be bare. Today they are fighting hard, clinging on, and disproving their critics but some day they too will be done. Did you say then why fight at all? That it’s useless, futile? I know. But then, they don’t fight in the hope of success! No, no! It’s much more beautiful when it’s useless, when it’s futile like in the final scenes of “The Last Samurai”. Oh what a beauty there is in fighting a lost battle. There’s an inexplicable romance to sword-wielding, horse-riding samurais charging in an open field at a mechanised artillery regiment of the Imperial army.

It’s the same with the five veterans. They fought and they continue to do so because like the Japanese Samurai, they don’t know any other way.

I could put down the statistics of this fabulous quintet and extol their achievements. But what’s the use of numbers, and at this stage, does it even matter? Do we need numbers to know their worth? The only numbers that everybody mentions now are 38, 36, 35, 35 and 34. Numbers are like the milestones on their journeys. Mere indicators. It is the journey and the sights they have left us to behold that are worth looking at again and again. Journeys that we’ll never be tired of retracing and sights that have been imprinted in our minds to be projected over and over again – a desert-storm at Sharjah, a defiance at Lords, a flourish at the Eden Gardens, a determination at Antigua, a virtuoso display at Adelaide…

Three leaves in autumn. And a wind…

Retirement is a tough call to make and there is no such thing as the right time to retire. It is a personal and an emotional decision. Should Federer retire if he wins another Grand Slam and breaks Sampras’ record for most GS titles? He would have discovered his form all right but after the recent slump shouldn’t he understand that his days are numbered? But what if he has several more titles still left? Did Henin make the right choice? Shouldn’t Warne make a comeback? Except the men and women concerned, nobody can know, sometimes not even them. The fickle media definitely not.

Soon they will all leave. Dravid will go, followed by Laxman. And some fall day, Sachin too will take his bow and ageing, sepia-toned, will begin his journey. But somehow I can’t imagine his journey being a short graceful one from the branch to the earth below. I’d rather dream of him being a leaf carried away on some wind, twisting and twirling and flying in a graceful manner like a ballerina that leaps into the air seemingly defying gravity.

He would arguably be the last leaf. And unlike O.Henry’s short story, this would be one Last Leaf that will be hard to imitate, replicate, duplicate. No masterpiece, no chef-d’oeuvre can come close to this original. The final journey of this Leaf would leave in its wake many a dead fan of Indian cricket.

Does the picture require a caption?

And the day that happens, the Indian cricket team would be a pale spectre of its formal self. Much like the Australian team is today without Waugh, Mc. Grath, Warne and Gilchrist.

The passing of these leaves, would herald a winter in Indian cricket. A winter that would disprove the implied answer to Shelley’s line in Ode to a West Wind “If winter comes, can Spring be far behind?” Oh yes, this one Spring will be far, far behind…