Last week, Aaj Tak declared that God would descend to earth. Wrong: he is already in our midst. Short with bright eyes, curly hair, an ever-ready smile, he uses a bat to bless all comers. You know he is the chosen one because the normally reticent DD News described him as a “sensation” and Sharad Pawar compared him to Lord Krishna. That would be Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar, the “God of cricket”.

Thus did Virender Sehwag, Headlines Today and several other news channels praise him as they celebrated 20 happy birthdays of Tendulkar’s international cricket career. Celebrated is too mild a word: since the middle of last week, television has been on its knees, worshipping at the altar of his talent: “Spectacular Sachin”, “20 glorious years” was the CNN-IBN salute. It was “Sachin Nama” on News 24 and Headlines Today had him in Superman’s gear. 

He is a ‘genius’ to Bombay’s former captain Milind Rege, ‘his favorite icon’ to cricket historian Boria Mazumdar whose Times Now “exclusive” interview was the first of at least ten other “exclusive” interviews on the air, all with similar questions but each time Tendulkar reacted as if he had been surprised by a bouncer. There’s a budding actor in him, for sure. Amitabh Bachchan lauded and applauded him, Aamir Khan praised his magnificent “obsession”, Soha Ali Khan lamented her broken heart each time he got out, Sunil Gavaskar couldn’t stop retelling the story of how he had predicted that Tendulkar would surpass his 34 test hundreds (if he remained fit) and Shane Warne, Imran Khan, Abdul Qadir, Shastri, Ganguly, Dravid and Bipasha Basu (Bipasha Basu?) shared their thoughts on the god of willow. Lata Mangeshkar congratulated him but she didn’t sing for him so Anup Jalota performed a specially-composed ditty for him on Zee News.

... contd.