THE DEPARTURE SMOKE : TENDULKAR , SACHIN RAMESH .

Some one is departing , yes a bit rugged and little tattered and the smell of departing foot steps is being felt across the whole cricketing diaspora .

Yes from the Sabina park , Kingston to the deep down  St John's Wood, London lord's ; from sharjah , the emirate of UAE to the spalding joy of the eden gardens, kolkata   , the meter of expected abominable lull in cricket can be felt and smelled  every where .

ITS TENDULKAR . 

Some people feel even a nuclear bomb can't break this
rock solid defence 

And when its TENDULKAR departure is just not about an old man who served this game for years and years .

Rather the departure is more about a rock solid statement of game , about the principles of driving the ball  kissing the green covers , and the cut calculated that just traverse down the line perpendicularly bisecting the arc joining wicketkeeper and slip .

The departure is more of an  anticipation never expressed before and after , of the purest line of perfect balance , economy of movement and precision of stroke making .

And for me Tendulkar has never been just a length of statistics .Who is sachin tendulkar
 a master 

 an artist, 
a rare breed of the so called sapience specie,
 a dictator whose knee never bent down,
 a pair eyes that behold the faith personified,
 an elbow habituated of injuries  and recovery , 
an idea that shaped this game 
beyond the boundaries of eleven little known nation, 
an aura that changed the face of this game from an act to religion , 
from a being to godliness ,
 from a structure defined by set old dictums to an emotionalia 
that sweeps off millions of heart ,
 I agree and I have no question
 if some one says "time stands frozen in front of this man".   

Cricket has traveled miles since ages , and its time to search for a new god like thing because you always need a

 god to keep the faith .Definitions have changed , strokes have changed .Perspective towards target has changed .

The combat ethics has changed .And today we have variety of people to handle the circumstances so beautifully .

.might be even better than Tendulkar did in last few seasons. But thats not enough .Thats not cricket .We should for

 the last time understand the thin line difference between cricket and statistics .Yes for the last time , as the chapter 

of cricket is so ardently being merged in statistics . I respect MSD for the way he handles things , for he can afford a

 win out of circumstances no matter how he does that . Yet it matters and cricket lies in the paraphase of

 "no matter how you are achieving a statistics ".

I believe cricket may figure out replacement of his statistics but the replacement of such a kind of demeanour and ethics that tendulkar displayed over years and years  is just not affordable .

IN an article published in  November 2003 issue of Wisden Asia Cricketmagazine Gray Baum writes 

" Once I was on a night train winding down from Simla to Kalka that stopped halfway for refreshments at a station

 lit by flaming torches. On a small television screen wreathed in cigarette smoke in the corner of the dining room Tendulkar was batting in a match in Mumbai. No one moved or spoke or looked away. The train was delayed by 20 minutes. Not until Tendulkar was out could the world resume its normal timetables and rhythms." 

......he further adds in the mid of the page

 " If Ian Botham can be seen as the Errol Flynn of cricket, or Viv Richards as the Martin Luther King, or Shane Warne as the Marilyn Monroe, or Muttiah Muralitharan as the hobbit, Tendulkar is surely the game's secular saint.

We never know what NOV. has in store for us yet a loss of personified aesthetic beauty is sure.
And the one last thing that I have learned over ages from this little master  

" dreams do come true little jaan "