What Sachin meant to a Pakistani

[Gambit]

If you had asked a Pakistani about Sachin any time during the last two and a half decades - regardless of the eventual nature of their response - they would’ve been sure to point out that he was not a match-winner. From the clustered masses in rickety chai stalls to elitiyas lazing in cheetah-print-wallpaper TV lounges, Pakistanis of all shapes and stripes (myself included) felt that although Sachin was a great batsman, he didn’t “win matches”. Pakistani cricket journalists, a sort of hipster-troll species since they were trolling before it was cool, often put this question to the man himself. Once after a 141 in Rawalpindi didn’t prevent a loss, Sachin was asked about his apparent inability to lead his team to wins in matches where he scored big. His face clouding with anger, he brusquely suggested that the journalists look up his numbers. Perhaps the journalist in question never took up that offer, but I decided to do just that. To my slight surprise, a perusal of the stats made this Pakistan-exclusive obsession feel willfully perverse. In ODIs, he scored twice as many 100s in wins as he did in losses (33 vs 16), and the ratio was almost the same for Tests (20 in wins, 20 in draws, 11 in losses). Out of the centuries he scored in losses, seven in Tests and four in ODIs came before 2000 – a time when the Indian team had as much credibility as the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize committee. But like with anyone, Pakistani perceptions were coloured by performances against Pakistan. But even here, the argument is statistically shaky. After all, Sachin’s averages in wins against Pakistan in both Tests and ODIs were several points higher than his overall figures in victories against all sides. But it was those five centuries and six 50s in losing causes (across both formats versus Pakistan) which captured the Pakistani imagination – what good were those scores if his team still lost? It is here where the realm of statistics stop being able to meaningfully contribute to this debate, since understanding this relationship further requires more abstract concepts. As I thought about writing this piece, I slowly began to realize that attempting to understand the Pakistani reaction to Sachin leaves one with a better understanding of the Pakistani identity itself. When Sachin arrived in Pakistan for his much-celebrated debut series, he was entering a country where the mediums for generating narratives had been systematically dismantled. Writers, poets, journalists and intellectuals had been targeted during General Zia’s regime in a way which made previous such repression by the Pakistani state feel mild in comparison. The historical and proud tradition of cinema had been reduced to a B-movie treadmill; newspapers were printed with entire pages blanked out by the censors; artists and activists were abducted, tortured and ‘disappeared’. As General Zia realized himself however, cricket had emerged as a viable force of national identity during his time. Unlike the state’s attempts at championing ludicrous versions of history and trumpeting obscure Muslim invaders as national heroes, cricket’s appeal was far more emotionally honest. For sure, it was still not the most popular pastime, and was also largely an urban phenomenon, but the Pakistani side had captured the imagination in the 1980s. The team had a string of glorious results during the decade, and in Imran and Javed had two icons that transcended the sport. What really triggered the sport’s emergence as the most dominant mirror of the national psyche was the World Cup win in 1992, the first global level triumph for the national cricket side, which up till now had the worthy but clunky title of “world’s 2nd best Test side.” Incidentally, that win came during a bumper era of global titles for Pakistan sport, with the hockey team winning their world cup in 1994, Jansher Khan taking over Jahangir Khan in monopolizing the world of squash (eight world titles in nine years for the former) and Mohammad Yousaf picking up an amateur world title in snooker – a popular working-class sport in urban areas. Yet Pakistan’s the wins in hockey and squash were the final glories for two dying institutions, both witnessing a disastrous fall from eminence within a few years. Similarly, snooker’s amateur trappings were also no match for the behemoth which was Pakistani cricket. With few alternatives in the cultural sphere – let alone the sporting one – cricket was the medium through which the Pakistani mythology was fashioned, and the most pervasive myth of all was delivered through the 1992 World Cup – the idea of the mercurial Match-Winner. It can be argued that save for their victory against Australia, Imran’s Cornered Tigers did not deliver a single cohesive team performance in the entire tournament. Instead, they won through a series of irrepressible performances from players of individual brilliance – the out-of-form Inzi’s audacious assault in the semi-final; the street-fighting Wasim skittling England out in the final; the tragically romantic partnership between those iconic frenemies, Imran and Javed, earlier in that match. (In the interests of nostalgia and fond memories, I have excluded Ramiz Raja’s one-man demolition of New Zealand from this list, which ended their incredible winning streak.) The 1992 World Cup win would go on to define the very idea of Pakistani cricket, and by extension Pakistani society, for the next two decades. The ideal formula for a team comprised of assembling a group of ‘match-winners’ and unleashing them on the opposition, the logic being that talent and chutzpah would eventually win the day. As remarkable as it seems to write down such a seemingly-flawed tactic, it largely worked for Pakistan, particularly as the 1990s side was overflowing with extraordinary talents. More importantly, the clamor for match-winners also said something else about the Pakistani psyche – it represented a lack of faith in institutions, a mistrust of rules, laws and techniques. To the Pakistani mind, instinct and inspiration were the sole ingredients for alchemy. For Pakistanis, Sachin’s forlorn, unfulfilled innings seemingly confirmed that while he may be a great player, he wasn’t a ‘match-winner’. That suspicion looked to be proven further when upon his retirement, people recalled Chennai and Desert Storm as two of his most iconic innings – matches which India lost. It took some evocative articles by Gideon Haigh for me to truly appreciate Sachin and finally made me wonder if we were looking at things the wrong way. After all, India and Pakistan have such a twisted, incestuous relationship that they make most postcolonial politics look tame in comparison. What if we were simply projecting our own vanities onto the Indian imagination, particularly with regards to Sachin? I have never been to India so I could be way off the mark here, but perhaps match-winners didn’t matter to Indians the same way. For starters, unlike Pakistan, India managed to inherit the entire subcontinent’s history upon Partition, which meant that among other things their cricketing history and pedigree was still left intact. It meant that unlike Pakistan, India probably didn’t share the same level of anxiety about wanting to let the world know that it existed. Moreover, it also meant Indians weren’t defined by the chips on their shoulders the same way as Pakistani cricketers were. Both Javed and Imran often felt like they were on a mission to redress the ills of colonialism, racism and general snobbery faced by their predecessors. Even today, Imran’s politics are defined by cultivating a similar sense of wounded pride above all else. Furthermore, it could also be argued that the 1983 World Cup win allowed India to make their ‘mark’ on the world stage much earlier. Perhaps the process by which cricket became popular in Pakistan post-1992 had already taken place in India a decade earlier. In either case, when Sachin emerged and his shoulders began carrying the never-to-be-removed weight of a billion hopes, the Indian demand from its hero seemed to be a different one. Instead of wanting a brief supernova of glory, India wanted to compete as an equal. India wanted someone who could represent it as the ancient, diverse, giant country that it was, rather than the plucky, travel-averse image of its cricket team, and this was precisely where Sachin came in. When Haigh compared Sachin to Bradman, he made two extremely pertinent observations about their fame and success. For starters, they were quite simply the most famous people in their country throughout their lives. In Haigh’s words, “oth … symbolised new possibilities—that their respective countries could be better than all the world, that they could rise above national ignominy. Bradman achieved fame during the Great Depression, Tendulkar in the aftermath of India’s 1991 economic crisis.” Secondly, he remarked how both “became fullest expressions possible of the professional cricketer in their eras, exploring the limits to the potential for the monetisation of cricket talent.” When you look at Tendulkar through those particular lenses, it makes his stature amongst Indians more understandable. It also drives home just how much Sachin was truly a portent of the future: he was a world beater in both sports and financial earnings long before either the Indian cricket team or the Indian economy could claim to be the same. More importantly, Sachin’s successes on and off the field eventually meant that he became the fulcrum around which the whole cricket world pivoted. Despite two decades of domination by the West Indies, it was Sachin’s career and the largesse his success engendered that truly shifted the center of the cricketing universe from England and Australia onto India and the subcontinent. While we in Pakistan were celebrating heroic, one-off wins, Sachin was transforming the very game itself. Of course, it’s not just about the money either. Few fans can be as acutely aware of the importance of continuity and stability in nurturing new talents as Pakistani cricket supporters. We keep producing raw talent which keeps getting lost at the hands of celebrity, corruption and crime. So perhaps we would appreciate more than most how Sachin, or rather his career and example, managed to give birth to two successive generations of Indian batsmen. His fellow members of the Fab Four – Ganguly, Dravid and Laxman – emerged several years after him and displayed the same courage, heart and desire he had put out for so long. Sachin stayed with them as they embarked on Indian cricket’s Golden Era, winning plaudits and series where they had never done before. But it didn’t end there – when the likes of Sehwag and Dhoni, and later Kohli and Dhawan, began to arrive they seemed to be inspired by the audacity and explosiveness of Sachin’s batting. Sachin could justifiably claim (not that he would) that these latest blistering young guns were iterations of the evolution he kicked off. And in the end, what every Pakistani Sachin-skeptic knows deep down inside his heart, he did us in as well. This year marked the 10th anniversay of Centurion, a match where Sachin successfully sought vengeance on the entire Pakistani team of the 90s and handed them a defeat that would lead to the end of their careers. Saeed Anwar, Rashid Latif, Wasim Akram were all hounded out after that match, and Waqar’s career never recovered from it. What’s more, Centurion was where Sachin set the definitive template for the upcoming decade, when rampaging Indian batsmen would toss aside Pakistani bowlers. A generation later, it was 2011 and there was Sachin again. The vagaries of DRS and Pakistani fielding aside, his innings eventually meant the Indian total at Mohali was (once more) too far a bridge for Pakistan to cross. We came home to the unending Misbah-Afridi debate, while Sachin went home on the shoulders of his team. Perhaps a pedantic Pakistani might quibble here that the two innings I’ve mentioned both weren’t hundreds, and that the original issue remains that Sachin didn’t win matches with his big innings. In response, I think I’ll sigh a bit, before reminding my compatriot that perhaps Sachin didn’t “win matches”, but he definitely ended up winning cricket itself.

http://cricketon.quora.com/What-Sachin-meant-to-a-Pakistani

[Soorma_Bhopali]

http://cricketon.quora.com/What-Sachin-meant-to-a-Pakistani

Do you know that Sachin's first International Appearance was for PAKISTAN :cantstop: He was summoned as a replacement fielder for a practice match in Brabourne stadium,Bombay i n the touring Imran Khan-led Pakistani side vs. CCI match in 1987 since 4-5 main pakistani players wanted to take rest during fielding , he came in , dropped a catch and due to which , Imran despatched him in the outfield.:hysterical: