On March 29, Sachin Tendulkar retweeted a photo sent to him which seemed to show him with a microphone and singer Sonu Nigam with a bat. The retweet hit bullseye, as expected, and set social media abuzz with speculation. The most obvious guess was that Tendulkar was going to appear in a song with Nigam ahead of the release of his biopic Sachin: A Billion Dreams later this month.
Over the next few days, Tendulkar confirmed the rumours with more retweets – the song, titled “Cricket Waali Beat”, was set to premiere during the finale of the Indian Idol singing reality show on Sunday, where the former cricketer was the celebrity guest and Nigam the judge. Needless to say, the song is awful.
Sample this stanza from the lyrics:
Straight drive, cover drive, off drive, on drive
Straight drive, cover drive, off drive, on drive
Straight drive, cover drive, off drive, on drive
Mara chhakkaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Tendulkar also goes on to name nearly all his India teammates in the song, from Ravi Shastri to MS Dhoni. Because. You know. “Love you guys”.
Tendulkar is quite easily India’s most popular sportsperson ever. More than three years after he retired from international cricket, he is still India’s most followed sportsperson on Twitter – with 15.3 million followers. Whenever Tendulkar tweets, the first reply to his post is unfailingly always “god”. That’s the status he still holds in the public eye. But in spite of his demigod status, Tendulkar is still striving to stay relevant.
Here’s hoping that at least the biopic is better than this abomination.
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