India lauds Tendulkar as The Greatest, but aren’t they forgetting someone?

We expected a certain amount of excitement on the sub-continent when Sachin Tendulkar, India’s modern deity, broke Brian Lara’s Test run-scoring record on Saturday.

I mean we know how the Indians love their cricket, we know how little Sachin is revered the length and breadth of that crazy, complex country and we know how their players’ successes can provoke a small ripple of, well, patriotic fervour among the more excitable Indian cricket fan.

So we expected hyperbole from the Indian press corps, purple prose and much grandiloquence. We even expected to see lilies being gilded, puddings being over-egged and mountains being built from molehills.

But for Tendulkar to be described as the Greatest Batsman Ever? No, I don’t think we expected that.

Yet Bobilli Vijay Kumar, in a piece in the Times of India entitled ‘For the Record, he is the Greatest’, has excelled himself, and his craft. 

Here is a snapshot of Kumar’s ode to the Little Master:  

”As Test cricket’s most prolific run-maker, the question kind of becomes redundant. But it will still be asked in certain uncharitable quarters. So here goes: Is Sachin Tendulkar the greatest batsman this game has seen?

”…. Today, as he crosses 12,000 and enters an even more rarefied stratosphere, one can only look up and marvel at his conquests.

”…. Let us never forget, he has spent 19 years of his life taking the game higher and higher. First, he brought big money into cricket; then, he made it a national passion. Indeed, for a very long time, he was the main unifying force in the country; in times of trouble, he was the only soothing balm too.

”Along the arduous journey, though, he maintained his poise all the way. Dignity and humility were part of his armour; amazingly, the hunger for the game never subsided. Is it surprising, then, that virtually all the important records in the game have come and lay down at his feet? Can there be any greater player than that?”

For more of Bobilli Vijay, as he hits full stride, see: http://cricket.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/3610299.cms.

Now we understand that sportswriters have got short memories, and that the current sporting ‘phenom’ is always better than last year’s Best Ever. And how their notion of history often relates to a time only just before laptops and mobiles were invented. And we understand that 1948 was, like, an awesomely long time ago.

But, stone the flaming crows, what’s going on in the Chandigarh press box? Haven’t they heard of The Don, The Boy from Bowral, the golf ball being hit up against the watertank, the 99.94 average, the final-innings duck, of Bodyline and The Invincibles? Haven’t they heard of the man we all take to be, and long expect him to remain, the Greatest Batsman of All?