In the end, when Sachin Tendulkar retired from cricket, his biggest achievement beyond all the runs that he had amassed seemed his longevity. I followed his debut Test in 1989 against Pakistan, listening to grainy commentary on an old Philips radio, whose antenna had to be in contact with another piece of metal, like the window grill, for better reception. His last game, I watched on an illegal internet stream with near perfect clarity, hosted by a Russian website, while at work. Twenty five years is a mind bogglingly long time to be a competitive international sportsman, and Tendulkar’s statistics linked to longevity (200 Tests; 462 one-day internationals) are as certain to be bettered as Don Bradman’s batting average of 99.94.
Having spent much of my boyhood, and youth idolizing Tendulkar, watching him (and Laxman, my other big cricketing hero) struggle against some pretty mediocre bowling over the last two years has been a traumatic experience.
Watching him plod on (for what he desired to achieve after the World Cup victory in 2011, not many were able to fathom) I was often reminded of some passages from the Mausala Parva, the 16th chapter of the great Indian epic Mahabharata. After the male members of Krishna’s Vrishni clan killed each other in a drunken beach brawl in Dwaraka, and Krishna himself had retired to the forest, it was left to the mighty Arjuna to escort the women, children and  the elderly of the kingdom to the relative safety of Hastinapura. The caravan was waylaid by robbers and petty thieves. Then Arjuna, the peerless warrior without whom no Pandava victory was imaginable, tried to string his large, indestructible, celestial bow, The Gandiva, with great difficulty. He then began to think of his celestial weapons but they would not come to his mind. Arjuna was ashamed that his arms had lost power, and the great celestial weapons were no longer at his beck and call. The women of Dwaraka were dragged away by the robbers and the material wealth of the survivors plundered. One of the epic’s early English translators, Kisari Mohan Ganguli writes, “In former days his shafts had been inexhaustible. Now, however, they proved otherwise. Finding his shafts exhausted, he became deeply afflicted with grief. The son of Indra then began to strike the robbers with the horns of his bow. Dhananjaya regarded it all as the work of destiny and was extremely cheerless…”
Tendulkar too, once the slayer of Shane Warne and other world class opponents, had begun to play from memory as his celestial weapons—the eyes and the fearless attacking instincts—slowly slipped out of his grasp. Tendulkar’s shots in the armoury, like Arjuna’s shafts had once been inexhaustible. By the end of his career, he didn’t seem willing to summon for instance the hook, pull or even his majestic and  thrilling charge down the wicket to hit spinners out of the stadium.
Indians, across various walks of life, find it hard to give up positions of power and authority. Politicians can never seem to figure out their sell-by date, and retirement is never permanent for businessmen. In Tendulkar’s case you could argue that he knew little else beyond the game and therefore the reluctance to depart having debuted at the international arena at the age of 16. 
It’s fashionable for men, and women, of my age to claim a part of them had died with Tendulkar’s retirement. But when he got out after making 74 in his last Test outing, there was a huge sense of relief. With his bowing out, the intensity of my cricket viewing (not playing, mind you!) would certainly drop. For someone who can watch a game of “book cricket” if telecast live, this change is significant. Hanuman Chalisa recitals on Test match mornings will no longer be required; no more tense nail biting and sweaty palms each time Tendulkar walked out in whites exaggeratedly adjusting his crotch guard, and vigourously nodding his head as if someone was extracting a confession at gunpoint. And of course, there would be no further damage to his batting average.
Thank God, it’s over.