The dichotomy of comparison: Hardik Pandya, Kapil Dev and why we obsess over the next big thing

On October 11, 2013, the Hindustan Times ran the following story on their newspaper for an event which had shaken the entire nation up. One day earlier, Sachin Tendulkar, the Master Blaster, the Little Master, the God, had announced that he was going to retire from international cricket after his 200th Test. And hence HT went with this very significant headline for a momentous story.

There will never be another you

Lots of adjectives, nouns and words have been used to describe Tendulkar. But perhaps these six words summed him up in a way few will or can. Sachin Tendulkar had transcended comparison. And if you follow sport, you will realise that that is the Mt Everest, the peak any sportsperson will ever have.

Keeping our heroes alive

Let us take another liberty: as a sport lover, recall yourself watching your favourite sport. When we are young and restless, there are no points of references and we grow up watching the heroes of our generation. But, and perhaps this is the disease of nostalgia, the heroes fade away but their memories never do. And those memories remain even we are older, wiser, more mature.

As an example, consider this: an age group which has only seen the MS Dhoni and the Virat Kohli era will never be able to understand why for the past 1990s generation, a brave cricket captain will always mean Arjuna Ranatunga. They will never understand why the phrase Sultans of Swing does not mean just a Dire Straits special, but also a term emphasising Pakistani trickery and deception at its finest and brought out at the first sight of reverse swing in a cricket match.

And why only cricket? Consider how Grigor Dimitrov, a 26-year-old Bulgarian with no Grand Slam tiles and only two semi-final finishes at a Major, has been termed the “Baby Fed”, to such an extent that Roger Federer the original, had to ask people to stop calling him that. Consider how almost every major boxer worth his salt may have probably had “the next Muhammed Ali” moniker attached to themselves. Or how the greatest sprinter of all time, Usain Bolt has already anointed South Africa’s Wayde van Niekerk to carry his mantle forward.

Comparisons in sport work in strange ways. Kobe Bryant, among the greatest NBA legends and who was relentlessly compared to the extraordinary Michael Jordan, even imitated the star throughout his playing career. And we’re not even going there about the Maradona-Messi contrasts. Or the various Iranian, Algerian or Turkish “Messis” that have cropped up everywhere.

Kapil Dev, Ben Stokes and so on

More than anything else, sports loves the similarities, the distinctions, the parallels. As Leon Festinger proposed in 1954, comparisons are nothing more than evaluations. And, therein lies the beauty and often, the dichotomy of sport. We evaluate a Virat Kohli’s ability when we compare him to Sachin Tendulkar. We try and understand Brian Lara when we put him up on the pedestal with Tendulkar. And what often starts with trying to evaluate or appraise often ends up in an ugly fight of “my icon is better”.

The latest victim is India’s new all-round sensation Hardik Pandya. Of course, he is not the first. Since 1978 when the Haryana Hurricane first burst into the limelight, India has awaited the next coming of the deity known as Kapil Dev. In Pandya, there is renewed hope, especially more so after a thrilling gob-smacking century in Pallekele. The chairman of selectors MSK Prasad thinks the 23-year-old has the potential to be the next Kapil Dev. Virat Kohli, Pandya’s captain, has already said he could be India’s Ben Stokes. Whew.

Is it correct? Maybe not. Is it fair? Well...isn’t that what sport is, after all?

Sports has no clean slates

Today, when Hardik Pandya hits three sixes in an over, can you really blame an old uncle or aunt, sitting on their arm-chair, bathing in the the warm nostalgia of Kapil Dev who once went one better and hit four sixes in a row to avert a follow-on for India? After all, it is just a frame of reference, a means to understand Pandya’s brilliance by pinning him on some imaginary marker. And isn’t that so intrinsic to sport? We may downplay and criticise it all we like but think for a moment and consider, a world where there are only clean slates and there are no comparisons.

How does it sound? Does it still sound exciting if the past does not stay alive through continued comparisons with the present? Would Kapil Dev’s man-on-the-burning deck 175 be still as exalted and mythical were it not have been compared to simply every come-from-behind knock ever played in cricket?

No, cricket and sport would be a boring, soulless place. By all means, do not weigh the hugely-talented Pandya down. He will always be his own man. But let us not stop the comparisons. Because, after all, that is how we keep our past alive.