Harsha's letter to Sachin :

Dear Sachin,
I guess this means the countdown has begun. It couldn't have been easy for you s
ince cricket has been your life, your solitary love outside of family. I know th
ere are cars and music and seafood, and, as I recently realised, the odd glass o
f wine, but a bat was what you were meant to hold, and it is with one that you m
esmerised a nation and a sport. I wondered if you could have given up Test crick
et and stayed on in one-day internationals - until you told me it takes a lot ou
t of you. And you were never one to give less than a 100%.
I guess your body finally won. It had been giving you signals - that permanently
cracked bone in your toe, the struggle to get out of bed when the back played u
p, that elbow... ah, that's a different story altogether, but you always overrul
ed it. It must have sulked but you forced more out of it than anyone else. It wa
s bound to serve notice one day. I mean, you will be 40 soon; people get reading
glasses at 40.
But you leave behind an aspect of cricket that you defined. There will be compar
isons with other greats in Test cricket, and you will be a chapter in its histor
y, but with the one-dayer, you are its history, in a sense, certainly for India,
where you played in more than half the games (463 out of 809). The team had pla
yed a mere 165 games before you started, and it is a measure of the impact you h
ad that there were only 17 centuries scored by then. India made a century every
9.70 games. After you started, that number comes down dramatically, to one every
3.52 games. And since that first century, in Colombo, it comes down even furthe
r, to one every 3.23 games. To think that you started with two ducks.
Now, of course, the kids keep notching up the hundreds. This young fellow Kohli,
for example, who plays with your intensity but whose vocabulary I guess you wou
ld struggle with!
Looking back, I can't imagine it took you 78 games to hit a hundred. But then yo
u were floating around in the batting order, spending too much time not being in
the thick of it all. I can see why you were so desperate to open the batting in
Auckland that day in 1994. Why, when you told me the story of how you pleaded w
ith Ajit Wadekar and Mohammad Azharuddin to give you one opportunity, you sounde
d like you were still pleading. But I guess you had a history of wanting to be i
n battle, like that misty night in Kolkata (it was Calcutta in your youth, wasn'
t it?) when you took the ball in the 50th over with just six to defend and deliv
ered a win.
It seems impossible to imagine that you averaged a mere 30.84 till that day in A
uckland, and that you dawdled along at a strike rate of 74. Since then you avera
ged 47 at a strike rate of 87. It was a marriage meant to be.
I remember that afternoon in Colombo when you approached your first hundred. It
had to be Australia, and you were in sublime touch, and you so wanted that first
one. You made 110 in 130 balls, but oh, you agonised over those last 15 runs be
fore you got to the century. In a sense, it was like that with the last one too,
wasn't it? It was in those moments only that you were a bit like us, that you w
anted something so badly, you let it affect your game. But between those two, yo
u were always so much fun, in that belligerent, ruthless, adolescent first phase
, in your second, rather more mature and calculated, existence, and of course in
that joyous last. What fun that was. The 163 in Christchurch, the 175 in Hydera
bad, that 200 in Gwalior, the 120 in Bangalore, the 111 in Nagpur. If it hadn't
been for that devilish 100th, would you have continued playing the same way? Tha
t 100th hurt you, didn't it, as it did all of us, and I guess we didn't help you
by not letting you forget. When the big occasion came, you always played it lik
e another game, even though you knew it was a big day, like those two classics i
n CB Series finals in 2008, or, of course, those unbelievable nights in Sharjah
in 1998. But this 100th took away four or five more.
Somebody said to me he didn't want you to quit because it would mean his child
hood was over. It isn't just them. Just as the child in you never grew up, so to
o did many grizzled old men become children when they saw you in blue

I know how disappointed you were after the 2007 World Cup. You weren't batting i
n your favourite position, you were unhappy (if you could ever be unhappy in the
game that you revered and tended to like a servant), and without quite saying i
t, you hinted at the fact that you might have had enough. But the dawn always fo
llows the darkest hour.
After the age of 34, in a young man's game, you averaged 48.36. Even by the stan
dards you set yourself, that was unbelievable (in spite of all those nineties, w
hen, almost inevitably, I seemed to be on air). And most of those came without y
our regular partner. While Sourav was around, you averaged almost 50 at a strike
rate of 89. The mind still lingers on the time the two of you would come out at
the start of a one-day international. (I watched one of those partnerships the
other night and it seemed only the commercial breaks could stop you two.)
By now you were playing the lap shots more than the booming drives down the grou
nd. It puzzled me and made many nervous. "I want to play down the ground too," y
ou told me, "that is why I am playing the paddle shot. As soon as they put a fie
lder there, I'll play the big drive." You were playing with the field the way yo
ur great friend Brian Lara did when he was on top of his game.
But beyond the numbers some memories remain. I couldn't believe how you went aft
er Glenn McGrath in Nairobi. I must have watched that clip 50 times but understo
od it more when you told me you wanted to get him angry, that on a moist wicket
his line-and-length routine would have won them the game. That pull shot is as f
resh in the memory as that first cover drive off Wasim Akram in the 2003 World C
up when you took strike because you thought the great man would have too many tr
icks for Sehwag.
I remember that World Cup well, especially an unheralded innings in Harare that
helped beat a sticky Zimbabwe and put the campaign back on track. And your decis
ion to keep the Player of the Tournament award in your restaurant because you wo
uld much rather have had the smaller winner's medal. It told me how much that me
ant to you, and when I saw the tears on your face that night in Mumbai, I instan
tly knew why.
I had only once seen you in tears and that was at a World Cup too. You were prac
tising in Bristol. You were just back from your father's funeral and were wearin
g the most peculiar dark glasses. There was none of the usual style to them; the
y were big enough to cover half your face. You agreed to my request to speak to
the media and briefly took them off while you were arranging your kit bag. I was
taken aback to see your eyes swollen. You must have been in another world but y
ou were courteous as ever. It was only Kenya the next day, but I can see why you
rate that hundred.
There are so many more. I was only a young cricket writer when I started watchin
g you play, so there will be many. That is also why so many of us will miss you.
Somebody said to me he didn't want you to quit because it would mean his childh
ood was over. It isn't just them. Just as the child in you never grew up, so too
did many grizzled old men become children when they saw you in blue. You were a
great habit, Sachin.
So you are done with the blue then. But the whites remain. That is our first ima
ge of you - the curly hair, the confident look, the front foot stride all in whit
e. I hope you have fun in them. You don't need to try too hard to prove a point
to us because when you have fun we do too.
Cheers, you did well for us. And you gave life and strength to our game.