"At a time when immediacy masquerades as relevance in sport, a nuanced understanding of true greatness evades us. It takes something as monumental as what Sachin Tendulkar achieved in Gwalior against a South African side of no little quality to prompt us to filter out the shrill absurdities and begin to examine the contours of real greatness."
So begins today's editorial in the newspaper I work for.
I disagree with the point it makes, the one about immediacy and relevance. I don't think too many people with an interest in cricket, or in any other sport, would confuse the two.
Editorial writers should develop a nuanced understanding of people's reactions to things, and realise that someone getting excited about Yuvraj Singh's six sixes in an over doesn't necessarily mean he/she thinks it's a feat comparable to, say, Rahul Dravid's 148 at Headingley. I didn't read or hear any such 'shrill absurdities' from the serious sports media when it happened, or on any other similar occasion.
I don't think anyone fails to see real greatness when it's in front of them. Those that deny it - everyone, for instance, who approves of the right-wing hatred directed at MF Hussain - do so because they'd rather be blind to it, or are bigots.
I don't think the Gwalior knock prompted anyone to examine the 'contours of greatness'. The 200 mark in ODIs was waiting to be broken. Tendulkar, happily for the editorial writers, happened to be the guy who got there first. I wonder what they'd have said if Charles Coventry had scored six runs more that day against Bangladesh.
I'm not calling Coventry great - and I don't think anyone would - but I wish people had given his achievement a little more respect. Most people instead couldn't wait for someone to come and wipe his name off the record book, as if his temerity to score so many in an innings had somehow sullied cricket's integrity.
Contrary to what the editorial says, most journalists are hasty to deny the not-so-great their due when they accomplish something special. How often, for instance, do you see the sentence - "the word great is overused"?
