100th100.in IN CELEBRATION OF SACHIN TENDULKAR'S 100TH 100!

In the heady days of 1989 when 16-year-old Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar left his school bag behind to plunge headlong into the service of a cricket-crazed nation that believed it was facing a war-like situation in Karachi , it robbed him of those fun-filled campus days you and I have enjoyed.

Even so, two lessons that we all learn in lower classes must be popping up in the mind of the run-machine : that time and tide wait for no one, and that there is a time for everything. Nearly 23 summers after the baby-faced , curly-haired boy walked to the wicket to face the fearsome quartet of Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Imran Khan and Abdul Qadir, the inevitable is now showing up.

The Times of India reported that over 57% of people polled in a recent survey wanted him to quit limited-over cricket . Statistically speaking, 26,813 people said he ought to retire. That number is lower than his 33,896 Test and ODI runs (15,470 and 18,426, respectively ) till date, but their combined opinion is far harder on the mind than getting runs off formidable pacers.

It would sound cruel for a nation that has used a cherubiclooking lad first as something like a child labourer and then as an adult workhorse on pitches from Jamaica to Johannesburg and Lord's to Lahore , to bay for his ouster. But economics and demographics have combined to vastly alter the societal pitch realities in India. Sachin's early days were in the 1980s when Mumbai, Delhi and other metros monopolised the team and few Indians beyond the urban elite could even afford cricketing gear.

Cut to 2012, when Sachin continues to hang on for dear life, and the team composition has changed dramatically with players from Ranchi to Kochi prying open the onceimposing gates of Team India . The dressing room is now full of youngsters like Ravindra Jadeja from Saurashtra's Navagam-Khed area who was only 11 months old when Sachin debuted in Karachi.

That toddler is now the $2-million man of IPL, thanks to a combination of prosperity reaching farther corners and the demographic dividend revealing itself, with 600 million Indians being under 25. Which raises the issue of - dare I say - an old man like Sachin continuing to aspire for what is essentially a young man's calling in a young country. There is a point when the fine line is reached , and the earlier one senses it, the better.

That is the moment when one ceases to be a phenomenon and becomes a denominator, weighing on one's own, or a team's performance. Mahendra Singh Dhoni referred to this phenom-to-denom factor in so many words when he said seniors' presence in the team was costing him roughly 20 runs on the field each time. The phenomto-denom factor is, of course, not exclusive to Sachin.

Hardly two years after Sachin turned a phenom, we had economist-turned-unwilling politician Manmohan Singh delighting at least the urban Indians, first as the finance minister spearheading P V Narasimha Rao's liberalisation policies, and later as Prime Minister in a turbulent phase that saw central governments collapsing like Indian wickets in Australia this season.

Source: Is Sachin Tendulkar becoming a denominator from a phenomenon? - The Economic Times