On 16th Nov, 2013, the day Sachin Tendulkar retired from international cricket, he gave a thoughtful farewell speech at Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium. Now he tells his life story in the memoir, “Playing It My Way”.
The 450-page book showcases the extraordinary life of a rare cricketing genius and shows him to be honest, funny, sentimental and a practitioner of subtle diplomacy. He also reveals his passion to play for India even in the face of crippling injuries, his memory for details, and his golden heart.
Sachin’s life in cricket began when he fell from a mango tree while trying to steal mangoes with his friends on a Sunday afternoon. “It was evident that something needed to be done to channel my energies… Ramakant Achrekar’s coaching camp… was Ajit’s (elder brother) answer”. The first match that Sachin played, for coach Achrekar’s Kamath Memorial Club, ended with a golden duck. But in a couple of years time, he launched himself in a whirlwind fashion in Mumbai cricket, scoring 1,025 runs in the under-16 Harris Shield tournament (’87-’88), which included 207 not out in quarter final, 326 not out in semi final and 346 not out in the final. He was barely 14 and he already had a world-record partnership of 664 runs, with Vinod Kambli, under his belt during that season.
Sachin may have had to face disparaging banners like “Bachche ghar ja ke dudh pi ke aa” (“Go home and drink milk, kid”) in the stands during his debut Test series in Pakistan as a 16-year old, but he did give a decent account of himself with two half-centuries (59 at Faisalabad and 57 at Sialkot) against what was perhaps the world’s fiercest fast bowling attack back then.
He fondly recounts his first Test century at Old Trafford, England in August 1990. “I had been lucky at the start of my innings, with Eddie Hemmings dropping me when I had tried to play an on drive. The ball had hit the outside part of my bat and spooned back to Hemmings, who failed to hold on to it… I batted patiently until I finally played a punch off Angus Fraser through mid off when on 98. Chris Lewis chased down the ball but by the time he threw it back to the bowler I had run three, completing my first Test hundred. The crowd stood to applaud but I was extremely uncomfortable about acknowledging them.”
The numerous descriptions of his centuries lack any air of arrogance. It’s remarkable for a man who scored 100 international centuries, the only player to have done so in the annals of cricket.
The maestro has been famous for his gargantuan appetite, both for runs and food. During the 2002 England tour, he recounts eating at Harry Ramsden’s in Guiseley, West Yorkshire. “There was one item on the menu titled Harry’s Challenge, which invited the customer to eat a giant portion of fish, either cod or haddock, served with chips, bread and butter and two other side dishes. If successful, the head chef would personally sign a certificate for the customer… I must say I managed the giant portion of fish fairly comfortably and also polished off the salad and other side dishes served to me.”
For a career that spanned almost two and half decades, it’s amazing how he stayed away from controversy except for the Mike Denness episode, where the match referee indicted him for ball tampering. In the book, he admits he should have informed the umpire before cleaning the seam of the ball, but denies tampering it. However, he should have been more forthcoming in his account of match-fixing scandal of 2000 and later spot-fixing incident during the 2013 IPL. He made only a passing mention instead of dealing with it in detail, just as he did in the “Monkeygate” scandal, involving Harbhajan Singh and Andrew Symonds during the Sydney Test in January 2008.
It also was baffling for him to mention a personal conversation between former India coach Greg Chappell and him. If he had maintained a dignified silence about it for seven years, why rake it up now?
Other milestones in the book include India’s historic victory over Australia at the 2001 Kolkata Test and the Test victory at Leeds against England in August 2002, the NatWest series victory in 2002, and of course the brilliant fashion in which India won the World Cup in his home town, Mumbai, in April, 2011. On the World Cup victory, Sachin says, “This was our moment. It was liberation. I had finally scaled cricket’s Everest…”
Sachin invited a fan, Sudhir Gautam, into the dressing room to hold the World Cup trophy. Sachin says, “He had travelled with us all the way through the World Cup and it was our way of showing him and the rest of our fans that we cared. I only wish I could have let every supporter at the Wankhede pose with the trophy”. On another occasion, he had left a match ticket and a Team India shirt, signed by all the teammates, for a taxi driver in Sydney during the 2008 tour.
A few incidents still evoke grief in him, especially his father’s death and the defeat in the 1997 Barbados Test, under his captaincy, where the team had failed to chase a target of 120.
He admits how South Africa’s Hansie Cronje and West Indian left-arm medium pacer Pedro Collins troubled him as a bowler. Sachin also acknowledges his inability to read the famous slope that runs through the Lord’s ground and perhaps the reason he could never score a Test hundred there.
Towards the end of the book, Sachin shares an emotional scene. He was sitting alone in the dressing room soon after his farewell speech. “Virat walked up to me again. I could see tears in his eyes. He held out his hands and said his dad had given him these threads, the kind that Indians wear around their wrists for good luck, and he had always wondered who he would give them to. It had to be someone very special. Then he handed them to me before touching my feet as my younger brother. I was speechless. I held him tight… I couldn’t say another word because I felt choked with emotion… finally I had to ask Virat to leave, knowing I would burst into tears if I tried to say anything else. It was a gesture I can never forget…”
The book falters on many levels. It’s an ordinary attempt to chronicle an extraordinary life. The writing is unimaginative and occasionally pedestrian. It gives the impression of being written in haste and edited in a similar fashion. It mentions Gwalior is a city “in the west of the country”. Typographical errors crop up as early as page 7: “As a kid I could…” is written as “As I kid I could…” On a number of occasions, Hindi expressions are misspelt or translated inaccurately. On page 296, “sher” (“lion”) is incorrectly translated as “tiger”. In a glaring lack of research, the book says, “We (Sachin and Sourav Ganguly) played together for over a decade in Test cricket and opened the batting for India in countless limited-overs international matches”. It takes less than two minutes to find out on Google that the duo opened for India in 136 ODIs. Certainly, Boria Majumdar, a Rhodes scholar and the primary writer of the book, could have produced a much better work.
Yet, the book shows how Tendulkar’s pursuit of excellence inspired generations of cricketers, including Rahul Dravid, V.V.S. Laxman, Sourav Ganguly, Virender Sehwag and now the likes of Virat Kohli. That’s where the book scores.
(Reuters blog)
