IN A country where cricket is considered as religion, there can be only one God. Similarly, where cinema is the biggest source of entertainment, there can be only one Shahenshah. Yes, I am talking about Sachin Tendulkar and Amitabh Bachchan. In post independence era, if we analyse who ruled the hearts of millions of Indians years after years, then we can easily conclude that there have been two superstars who are as different as chalk and cheese in terms of personalities.
If Amitabh Bachchan, the Shahenshah of Bollywood, has a towering personality, high pitched voice then Sachin Tendulkar, the God of cricket, is just the opposite in height with a look of kid having low pitched voice. Hence, Amitabh Bachchan became the Big B and Sachin Tendulkar became the Little Master. However, one area where both of them are alike is ruling.
The year 2009, became a landmark year for both these icons. Big B completed his 40 years of cinema while Little Master became the first Indian to celebrate 20 years of international cricket. Both these icons are very much similar in some aspects as well as totally contrasting in few others.
Similarities
One man show: In the late 70's and 80's, Big B became the virtual one man industry. Then the belief of Hindi cinema was ‘sign Big B, get another super hit’. Stars like Dharmendra, Rajesh Khanna gave many hits while many great actors like Naseeruddin Shah and Om Puri gave many brilliant performances. However, none of them could match Amitabh Bachchan. The only person who looked to be a match for Big B was Vinod Khanna but he left cinema pretty quickly thus making Amitabh undisputed numero uno.
Ditto happened to Indian cricket in 90's. Indian cricket team was virtually one man army. The strategy of all the rival teams was only to get rid of Tendulkar and the match is out of India's hand. When players like Azharuddin, Jadeja, Mongia allegedly used to take money from opponents (though it hasn’t been proved) and the likes of Dravid and Ganguly still newcomers, the whole burden of the team was on the Little Master alone.
Ditto happened to Indian cricket in 90's. Indian cricket team was virtually one man army. The strategy of all the rival teams was only to get rid of Tendulkar and the match is out of India's hand. When players like Azharuddin, Jadeja, Mongia allegedly used to take money from opponents (though it hasn’t been proved) and the likes of Dravid and Ganguly still newcomers, the whole burden of the team was on the Little Master alone.
Ruling people's hearts: Many actors gave super hits. Many actors gave brilliant performances. However, all didn’t become the hero of the people like Big B. During the shooting of Coolie, Amitabh Bachchan suffered an accident which almost ended his life. That disturbed the people so much, that everyone in the country started praying for him. Very few people can enjoy this kind of fan support. Few years back, Indian government tried several ways to make the awareness of polio drops among the people but none bore fruits. Ultimately when Big B promoted that, immediately many took their children for the polio drops proving the brand name of Big B. In cricket, only one man enjoyed this kind of honour. There have been several players who scored runs and some even have better averages than Tendulkar, but none of them could garner that much of respect like the Little Master. Whenever Tendulkar used to walk out to the centre, everyone used to pray to God that Tendulkar get a hundred. As soon as he would get out, people used to be so disheartened that immediately they would switch off their television set. In some occasions even people use to prefer other batsmen to get out so that they could see their favourite batsman batting. In a way, this made Tendulkar's work more difficult as he always had to carry the burden of expectations along with the burden of the team. Today, if cricket is the religion in India, then the credit for this should be given to the God of cricket- Tendulkar.
Impressing contemporaries' hearts: Big B is the favourite of most of the comtemporay directors. Most of his contemporary directors right from Yash Chopra, Manmohan Desai, Prakash Mehra, Ramesh Sippy to today's Gen X directors like Karan Johar, have repeated him in their movies. There are many actors who considered Amitabh Bachchan their favourite. Similarly, Tendulkar kept inspiring all his team mates, be it Virender Sehwag who modeled himself on Tendulkar or MS Dhoni who started playing cricket after watching Tendulkar playing. The fan following of Little Master was not limited to India alone. The ace spinner Shane Warne considered Sachin Tendulkar the best player of his era. Warne adds, "You have to watch India in India truly to appreciate the pressure that Sachin Tendulkar is under every time he bats. Outside grounds, people wait until he goes in before paying to enter. They seem to want a wicket to fall even though it is their own side that will suffer." Warne also admitted that Tendulkar gave him even nightmares during 1998 series. In fact, Sachin's fans are not limited to this era alone. The greatest cricketer of all time, Sir Don Bradman, also accepted that Tendulkar reminded him of his own batting.
Brand ambassadors: Though AB senior didn’t endorse that many products in his hay days, but in this decade he has been brand ambassadors of many products. When it comes to Sachin Tendulkar, he has been the biggest brand in cricket.
Late marks: Amitabh Bachchan got his first hit in form of Zanjeer which came after 14 flops. After which he never had to look back. On the other hand, Sachin's case is a bit similar. The record holder of most one day international (ODI) hundreds took 79 ODI matches to score his first ODI hundred which is a record for India. After that he eclipsed most of the ODI batting records. In tests, he needed just nine matches for his maiden ton. Other players like Azharuddin, Sourav Ganguly had much better start in test than Tendulkar but ultimately Tendulkar went way ahead of them both in tests as well as ODIs.
Hence, we can easily rate both the legends undisputed best in their field. If Bachchan is our biggest superstar of cinema, then Tendulkar is the same for sports. However, there are certain differences also between the two.
Differences
Personality: If Amitabh Bachchan is the Big B, then Sachin Tendulkar is the Little Master. If Amitabh Bachchan having a towering personality proved ‘bigger is greater’, then Sachin Tendulkar, still having the charisma of 16 year boy, proved big things happen in small packages. Just imagine a short 16 year old boy facing the gigantic bowlers like Imran Khan, Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis!
Age of making mark: When Amitabh Bachchan got his first hit in 1974; he was already in his early thirties. By then Rajesh Khanna, who was born in the same year of Big B, was already a superstar at that point of time. Much younger ones like Rishi Kapoor also became a star with Bobby which was released few years back by them. After few years he became the ruling superstar when most of his contemporaries, barring the likes of Dharmendra and Shashi Kapoor, were younger than him. But in case of Sachin Tendulkar, the opposite happened. He made the record of the youngest Indian to debut, to score test hundred, to captain his side in ODI cricket. He became the backbone of the team in 90's when most of his colleagues like Azharuddin, Sidhu, Manjarekar, Srinath, Kumble to name a few, were elder than him. Afterwards Ganguly and Dravid joined with him to form the Holy Trinity of Indian cricket. Here also Sachin was the youngest one. Later, he became the youngest player to play 100 tests at the age of 28. Interesting many start their career at the age of 28, by which Tendulkar became an icon. During his first series itself, when he was just 16, he went on to spoil the career of Abdul Qadir, the most reputed spinner of that time.
So, from the above, we can find that both were very much different. But it is really difficult to find two individuals who are alike in all aspects. Hence, we can conclude now, that the Big B and the Little Master both ruled all these years, sometimes in similar ways, sometimes in different ways.
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