Sachin Tendulkar vs Lionel Messi: There can never be a winner in this debate

It’s that time again. This is when big game hunting becomes legal. This is when ‘CompareToSachin’ API (pardon my computer science background) is open and free to use and abuse. Lionel Messi has retired, so it’s obvious that we need to compare him with Sachin Tendulkar. Why, you ask? Because we have a strong urge to compare everything under the sun and beyond. Yes! Milky way is the best galaxy around and Pluto is without a doubt the best planet in the universe. Don’t kid yourself, it’s a planet all right. As kids, we grew up comparing superheroes based on their uniquely different powers. Who would win if Batman and Superman were to fight? We would simulate whole battles and try to find a scientific proof for who (Batman, of course) is superior. No surprise movie studios knew what we were doing to cash in on it. [caption id=“attachment_2859686” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Sachin Messi or Lionel Tendulkar?[/caption] And why must everything be compared to Sachin? Because everybody knows and follows him in India, so he becomes the standard unit of comparison. It’s perfectly valid to ask if LeBron James was as good as Sachin in the NBA Finals. One can answer this by saying he was around 0.73 Tendulkars on the court. No wonder then that fans go berserk when Maria Sharapova says she hasn’t heard of this standard benchmark called Tendulkar. You can take this to absurd levels if you want and still make it sound legit. For example, let’s take your socks. Have you ever seen a pair of socks not performing under pressure? Has a pair of socks every failed you when you needed that run? Socks never even retire unless you want them to. They don’t choose between nation and club. Socks are better than Messi and Tendulkar combined. In most comparisons, Sachin will be hailed superior to anyone else, but there are rare exceptions. Not so long ago, folks were comparing  Sachin with Muhammad Ali. The scales would tend to tilt in the direction of an athlete who is often hailed as the greatest sportsperson ever. But we didn’t just stop there, we added Ali’s contribution to social justice to the scales. After all, what good is a sportsperson if he isn’t a Nelson Mandela off the field as well. (Although, by that yardstick, it is also absolutely fair to question Mandela’s weakness outside the off-stump while talking about his fight against apartheid). So, yes, Tendulkar and Messi are two of the greatest sporting icons this generation has seen. Yes, they have a huge impact on the sport they played. Their legacies transcend their sports and affects all aspects of popular culture. But how do you compare their legacies? They are as unique as their fingerprints, as special as their unbelievable skills. Sachin took India to the finals of 2011 World Cup, but couldn’t deliver in the final. But he still helped galvanise the team on that important day, and fulfilled his destiny. Messi has done the same for his nation but doesn’t have anything to show for it. Both cricket and football are team games at the end of the day. There is a popular quote by Robert Zend that you may often find on T-shirts and posters: “People have one thing in common; they are all different.” But, instead of just trying to understand how good a person is, we can’t resist but compare a person with someone else, often to our peril. This is as popular in sport as it is in daily life. In human society, it extends to what I call “uski saari meri saari se safed kaise” syndrome. We compare our kid’s results to Sharmaji’s son even when he scores 90 per cent. We compare our ex-girlfriends, wives, husbands, in-laws. Quite often there are no real winners in these comparisons; only one real loser, the person doing the comparison.