Blues legend BB King still sings The Thrill is Gone all over the world despite being 88. He still makes his guitar Lucille weep in a way, music buffs reckon no one of his generation can or has ever since. So where music is concerned, the thrill has not gone. In cricket, it has.
Sachin Tendulkar will never again enjoy a sleepless night before the first morning of a Test match. That feeling, as he will tell you, is unique. The word ‘enjoy’ is used cautiously because for this great batsman, even the most stressful of times was enjoyment. And we enjoyed Tendulkar more than he enjoyed his success and challenges.
Once, he was a beast of a player. In 1998, during the Bangalore Test of the India vs Australia series, Dennis Lillee told this newspaper that if he were bowl to Tendulkar, he would have worn a helmet himself.
Of course, this was hyperbole, but Australia’s greatest fast bowler was just giving us an idea of how destructive the batsman was.
Tendulkar mellowed with age. Some pundits reckoned he became an accumulator of runs — a far cry from an absolute destroyer of bowling attacks. But he survived in more ways than one and achieved whatever there was to accomplish in cricket.
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