The valiant never taste of death but once, Caesar said, but he was wrong. If you are a sportsman, you die twice — once at retirement. The national mourning that followed the retirement of Sachin Tendulkar was different only in degree and volume from those that greeted similar goodbyes. There is a sadness about endings that is inevitable, and seems to affect some fans nearly as much as the players.
It is not difficult to understand this. We weren’t just successful, wrote Kareem Abdul Jabbar, the NBA great, “we were significant.” You are in your thirties (usually) when a huge part of your identity, purpose, focus, and sense of belonging is taken away. You go from being a promising youngster to a world beater to a former star who sometimes annoys people with stories of the good old days.
As Tendulkar said of his approaching retirement, “Cricket has been my life. All of a sudden there comes a moment when I say I can’t go on.” In many cases, endings are new beginnings too. They have to be, for nearly two-thirds of life remains, and the past is not always a comfortable country to live in.
No worry
In the early years, some Indian cricketers quickly ran through their earnings and needed to depend on the kindness of strangers. That is no longer a serious worry, for at the international and franchise levels, cricketers are well looked after.
They crave for significance, however, or relevance, as Mahendra Singh Dhoni put it. Being a brand name can be a life-long profession, but few players reach that level. Most will have to take the route of coaching-commentary-administration-business, or if that feels like too much work after so much of it as a player, they have to ensure their names carry enough weight for others to do all the work.
Athletes realise how difficult it is to begin — and often worry about how much more difficult it can be to end.
Wasn’t it just the other day we were bidding Tendulkar a tearful farewell, asked a friend, and now it is time for tears again for another generation. I am old enough to remember when we asked ourselves how Indian cricket would ever survive without the great spin quartet or later, Sunil Gavaskar, Kapil Dev, Rahul Dravid, Anil Kumble, Ravichandran Ashwin….the list is long, and as inevitable as the question.
Couple of questions
Watching Dhoni at 43 stump Suryakumar Yadav in the IPL with the speed and certainty he is known for, two questions ask themselves: Did he retire from international cricket too early? And more pertinently, how much longer? Great players can reconnect with their best occasionally, no matter what their age. This explains the popularity of ‘Masters’ tournaments in any sport.
Will Federer at 60 give us another glimpse of his forehand that ruled the world? Or at least hint at what he was once capable of? I once saw Bishan Bedi fool a batter into going the wrong way and getting stumped. He was in his 50s then and was turning his arm over for fun.
The IPL this year has a player who was born after the tournament made its debut. Rajasthan Royals’s Vaibhav Suryavanshi is just 13. The commercial featuring Dhoni –“I had won the IPL before he was born” – and Sanju Samson – “No worries. He too will win the IPL before you quit” puts it all in perspective!
Rohit Sharma is 37, and Virat Kohli gets there later this year. They have retired from T20 internationals, but a good IPL might see them in the mix for the T20 World Cup in India less than a year away. Ahead of that is the five-Test tour of England in June. The next 50-over World Cup is in 2027, and it is possible the fitter of the two if not both players could be in the team then.
However, as much as the players themselves, the team and the fans too have to prepare for the inevitable. It will not be easy for any of them. Not too many Indian players have been given the luxury of choosing a time and place for their goodbye. Tendulkar was an exception. Both Kohli and Rohit deserve to be given that option too.
Published – March 26, 2025 12:30 am IST