Sachin Tendulkar is one of the greatest cricketers the world has ever seen. When he retired in 2013, Sachin held the record for the highest number of centuries in test cricket, the highest run-scorer, the highest number of 'Man of the Match' awards. And in one-day cricket, the highest number of centuries, highest numbers of fifties, to name a few. However, his contribution to India was indefinably greater than just statistics or sporting achievements. With cricket being such an important part of India's national fabric, Sachin symbolized a dedication and commitment to an ideal in which the individual batted for the larger good. Perhaps, that's why it's only fitting he became the first sportsperson, and the youngest too, to receive India's highest honour, the Bharat Ratna.
As we sit in Sachin Tendulkar's home office surrounded by trophies of his landmark innings, the man known as the 'God of Indian cricket', even in his retirement, comes alive when he talks about his cricket journey. When the diminutive genius walked out on the pitch, so did a billion Indians. Yet his shoulders proved, time and again, broad enough for a billion aspirations. When he faltered, we blamed him, when he won-and what victories they were-it was our collective victory.
The longest journeys begin with the smallest steps. And for Sachin, he didn't play cricket to emulate a star batsman or cricketer, he didn't want to be a Bradman or Gavaskar as a little boy.
'The reason I started playing cricket was my brother, Ajit,' he says. 'I wanted to be like him. I was just ten years old and we would play cricket in our colony in front of the building. We'd spend the whole afternoon in our summer holidays playing in the scorching heat-nothing would bother me.'
'From emulating your elder brother to cricket becoming an abiding passion for you till today, what transformed the game for you?' I ask.
'The first defining moment in my life-when I seriously thought about becoming a cricketer-was in 1983 when we [India] won the World Cup. I didn't know much about cricket at the time,' he says.
'To be honest, I didn't even know that after 6 balls are bowled the field, not the batsmen, changes. In our building, the batsmen would change because of the limited space available. I only learnt that later on. All I knew then was that it gave me a lot of happiness,' he says, smiling.
'In fact, when we won the World Cup, I didn't know the significance of winning it either,' he says.
In 1983, India entered the World Cup cricket finals for the first time and were playing against arguably the best team in the world at the time-the West Indies. Led by captain Kapil Dev, their win was celebrated across the country.
'I still remember, in the evening, my friends went to the neighbourhood park and celebrated, and I didn't understand why it was so big; I was celebrating because they were celebrating. But you know that sight of Kapil Dev holding the World Cup-it is still so fresh in my mind. That was one moment where I said, "I want to do this one day. I want to hold that trophy,"' muses Sachin.
When Kapil's devils, as they were called, went from underdogs to beating the mighty West Indians, it gave the entire nation a sense that we could win the big battles. This was history being made, a victory that went beyond sports.
'The 1983 World Cup victory transformed our belief about ourselves as a cricketing nation. How did it change you as a ten-yearold?' I ask.
'It had a huge impact on me,' he says. 'From then on, things started changing gradually. I spent time at Shivaji Park with Achrekar sir [Ramakant Achrekar was Sachin's first coach]. I spent my entire summer holidays with him. That's when Achrekar sir approached my father and asked if it would be okay to change my school. I moved from the New English School in Bandra to Shardashram because they had a better cricket team. They invariably reached the finals and won a number of school tournaments. So, I started playing there, did well, and then came my debut.'
And what a debut it was! The Sachin story had already begun spreading across Mumbai when memorably, as a teenager, he faced his idol Kapil Dev's bowling at the nets. Selected to play for Mumbai at just fourteen, Sachin went on to score centuries in his first appearances at the Ranji and Duleep trophies. It was increasingly clear that his talent, and bat, could not be ignored. Then came his first international tour in November 1989 to Karachi, Pakistan. It was the tour that transformed Sachin Tendulkar, a boy wonder, into a cricketer.
At sixteen years old, Sachin was India's youngest cricketer ever to be selected in a test team, part of the eleven-member Indian squad all set to face some of the world's best fast bowlers from Imran Khan to Waqar Younis. As if that wasn't daunting enough, playing Pakistan on their home ground was a whole different ball game as the young Sachin was soon to find out.
Sachin smiles as he recalls that series. 'My debut series with Pakistan was without a doubt a defining moment in my career. At sixteen years, I didn't understand this rivalry and to what extent players pushed themselves especially when it was an India-Pakistan match. It was an acid test for me to go from domestic cricket to international cricket-that is in itself a big jump-but then I went to Pakistan and played the best bowling attack in the world. After my first outing [Sachin was bowled out for 15 in the first test by Waqar Younis, who was also making his debut], I remember walking back to the dressing room embarrassed, disappointed, and in tears. I went to the bathroom and I looked at myself and thought-"This is your first and last test match. You're not good enough to play for India."'
Luckily for India, Sachin's older teammates rallied around him. 'That's when my teammates calmed me down. They taught me real-life lessons-that I could only learn from my mistakes, that it was important to spend some time in the middle, that this was not a school match, I was playing against the best, and that I should respect the fact that I would not be able to hit every ball; if I felt that the pace was too much, well, everyone felt that way. I had to give myself time. On that tour there were two moments where I felt I was heading down south and I'd lost hope. Then, in the next test match I scored 59 runs and it restored my confidence,' he remembers.
'The crunch moment in that series came in the fourth test match. India was batting in the second innings with a day and a half to go,' Sachin continues. 'Till then, we had drawn three test matches.
So, we were doing really well, and Pakistan was desperate to win the series; they had a better fast-bowling attack. They had Imran, Wasim, Waqar and the fourth fast bowler kept changing in every test match. We were 34-4 when I got hit on my nose with a fast ball from Waqar. I broke my nose, but I continued batting, and we saved that test match.'
He recounts the story matter-of-factly today, but as a young boy of sixteen facing a Pakistani fast-bowling attack and then continuing to bat with a broken nose after refusing medical help must have been excruciatingly painful. Then captain Imran Khan had apparently told his bowlers-all much older than the teenager-to specifically target Sachin.
'What kept you going?' I question.
'Well,' he says, 'I had heard many stories where batsmen had been hit. It either makes or breaks them. Fortunately, in my case, I became fearless. My brother was also there watching the game and I remember at tea time, I was batting on some 8 or 10 runs and while going up, my brother just looked at me and I said, "I'm okay, don't worry."'
He was better than okay. The Pakistan tour was a trial by fire which the teenager passed with flying colours. I wonder if Imran Khan (now the Prime Minister of Pakistan), and others in the Pakistan team, realized at the time that they had blooded a future cricketing legend. 'Did they ever apologize for the way they targeted you?' I ask.
'We never discussed it,' he says with a smile. 'Yes, there were moments when they could've been better but at the end, on the field, it's ruthless. Nothing else matters. The whole country is looking up to you with high expectations. If my heart tells me, yes, you've done your best, then that's all that matters.'
After that, milestones kept falling by the wayside. A series of tough tours-Pakistan, New Zealand and England-followed. In fact, out of Sachin's first twenty test matches, nineteen were played abroad. It was on the England tour that he scored his first century.
'Even though I made my debut in 1989, the first test match that I played in India was in 1993 against England. When I scored my first 100 in England, I'd like to believe that, at least in those days, I had cemented my place in the team. Slowly the team management started showing a lot of confidence in me. I got promoted to number four; I was number six or seven in the batting order. Then, in Australia, I started batting at number four. All these moments contributed to my cricket journey.'
As records continued to be broken, Sachin's cricketing stature grew. Importantly, his belief in Team India and putting the game first also stood out. Even as chants of 'Sachin! Sachin!' drowned out everything else when he walked on to the field, he never let it go to his head. Perhaps the moment that best defines Sachin Tendulkar's character is his father's death during the 1999 World Cup. Sachin, who was extremely close to his father, was devastated. He flew back to India for just one day and then came right back to play for India, scoring 140 runs against Kenya.
'Was that a difficult decision to take?' I ask.
Sachin, ever self-effacing, responds, 'It wasn't my decision. It was my family's decision. You must have people who advise you to do the right thing. All my family members, my mother, my wife felt that I should go back and that is what my father would have wanted, so I did that, even though it was very difficult for me. On one TV interview, after that match, I had to wear my sunglasses. I've never done that before, but I couldn't control my tears every time I spoke about my father and I didn't want to cry in front of the cameras.
Even when we were warming up, my eyes were constantly red. There were many times when I was playing that match and I kept looking up because I felt he was watching over me. It's difficult to express what I felt at the time. Every individual has to go through this, and we all have our own challenges that we have to overcome.'
From Sachin's individual challenges of performance and personal losses to the larger challenges of being an Indian cricketer . . . cricket in India is more than just a sport. It's almost sacrilege if India loses or a player fails. Whether it's the fans or the media scrutiny, the feedback can be brutal.
Sachin, too, wasn't immune to this. His tenure as captain was short-lived, leaving him, as he describes in his autobiography, Playing It My Way, 'scarred' and 'devastated'. The media used terms like 'Endulkar' to debate whether it was time for him to retire. Controversy began to dog Indian cricket's most-loved player. Yet, he stayed the course, letting his bat and his actions, on and off the field, do the talking.
'Cricket taught me patience and how to prepare for life,' he says. 'For me, what went on in the dressing room mattered the most because we knew what we had planned and how much we'd been able to execute that plan. Outsiders don't know what's happening in the dressing room. It's good to know what's happening in the outside world, but there comes a stage where you need to shut the doors and think about the game.'
'Were there any moments when you wanted to just quit? What were the toughest moments, Sachin?' I ask.
He doesn't mince his words, answering immediately. 'The 2007 World Cup.'
India had crashed out of the opening round of the 2007 World Cup in the West Indies, losing to teams like Bangladesh and Sri Lanka under coach Greg Chappell. The coach had decided to move Sachin down the batting order from number one to four.
Sachin later wrote about how bad things were at the time, with the breakdown in relations with the coach who he referred to as a 'ringmaster who imposed his ideas on the players'. At one time, he'd even suggested to the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) that Greg Chappell should be left behind when India went for the World Cup as the open spat between Greg Chappell and senior players like Sachin, V.V.S. Laxman and Sourav Ganguly had lowered team morale.
'This was the moment when I came back home because I felt the right decisions in the team's interest were not being taken,' Sachin says. 'The thought process was different, and I was not particularly fond of that kind of planning. Also, we didn't qualify for the World Cup. Everything kept adding to the disappointment and there came a point when I told my brother that I didn't want to continue. I wasn't enjoying playing like this. My brother just told me one thing: "Imagine yourself holding that trophy in 2011."'
'You've mentioned life lessons learnt in the dressing room. What are the life lessons you've learnt from failures like these?' I ask.
'The importance of my family,' he answers. 'They taught me the values that I brought to the field. Nothing happens overnight; this generation wants everything right now. I say, you can have everything right or now, not both.'
From then on, however, things began to change. A new team management was brought in and Sachin soldiered on. From being out of the 2007 World Cup to the dramatic one in 2011, it was a whole different ball game.
The 2011 World Cup was Sachin's sixth. The final match against Sri Lanka was held in his home town, Mumbai. It had been twenty-eight years since India had won a world cup. But 2 April 2011 was India and Sachin's night.
The winning moment came with a 6 from M.S. Dhoni, and the country erupted in jubilation. From Sonia Gandhi in Delhi to Amitabh Bachchan in Mumbai, everybody spilt out on to the streets in spontaneous celebration, waving the national flag. Fittingly, Sachin was the highest run-scorer for India in the world cup.
'It kind of completed the journey. This was where I'd started and here I was, in my home town,' he says, smiling as he recalls that day. 'The way the entire country celebrated that night was incredible! Without a doubt, it was the best cricketing day of my life. I never thought it would take us so long to get from Wankhede Stadium to the Taj in Colaba. If I had started walking, I would have beat the bus we were in. It was all worth it because that moment was something which is never going to be repeated in my life,' he says.
India and the team recognized Sachin's contribution to the win. The team spontaneously carried him on their shoulders as they took a victory lap of the stadium. Interestingly, this was Sachin's final world cup and a young Virat Kohli's first. 'He's carried the burden of the nation for twenty-one years so it's time we carry him on our shoulders,' said Virat after the game.
'A journey that began at Lords in 1983 was completed at Wankhede Stadium in 2011. How do you think a country's psyche changes after a victory like that? How does it bring a nation together?' I ask.
'It's not just about cricket,' Sachin replies. 'It's any sport. While celebrating a win like this, people forget about their personal sorrows.
We all have our challenges, but sport has the power to make you forget your personal problems and celebrate the occasion.'
Cricket has been larger than a game, it has been a unifying force. How does he see the future of Indian cricket now under Virat Kohli?
'The future of cricket is really bright,' says Sachin. 'We've got a combination of really good senior guys, a few guys who have played for nine to ten years which is a long enough period, and talented youngsters. So, it's a blend of three generations playing together.
This is a positive sign for Indian cricket. I'm almost certain about that, but there are no guarantees in sports. The Indian team is much stronger than the other teams.'
Sachin's son, Arjun, is now part of a next generation of cricketers. He often talks about his family-his parents, brother, wife and children-being his key support system. Now that his daughter has just graduated and his son is beginning his cricket journey, Sachin finally has time to spend with them. 'You were constantly on tour during their growing-up years; what is it like reconnecting with them?'
'It was really tough for Arjun's first six years,' he says. 'He wouldn't talk to me, not even a word on the phone when I was travelling, so that became difficult for me. I would become worried. He was completely cut off from me. But when I got back, he would forget the rest of the world-that was his way of handling the situation. My daughter, Sara, was more understanding, it was easier to communicate with her.'
'Playing cricket isn't easy when you're Sachin Tendulkar's son. Are there huge expectations?' I ask.
'I never forced my son to play cricket,' Sachin replies. 'My daughter studies biomedical sciences. I don't think Anjali [Sachin's wife Anjali is a qualified doctor] has ever forced her into it. Our only condition was that they had to give their hundred per cent, whatever field they chose. Success is not guaranteed, but hard work is. I've told them, "I'm not going to judge you on your results, as long as you've done your best. I'll never put any pressure."'
'Finally, what do you think will be the Sachin legacy to Indian cricketers and the nation?'
'I was very proud about walking on to the field,' answers Sachin. 'I pushed myself as hard as I could and that included every practice session. I was happy with my game, but I was never satisfied. Having played with more than one generation of cricketers, it was a learning experience for me as well because I believe the day you stop learning is the beginning of your downfall.
'I learnt on a daily basis, from the younger players I played with, how they thought, how they prepared, and shared what I had learnt as well. I remember from my own experience when we were playing against Pakistan, we had 16-17 runs left to win. I had injured my back, and I felt like I was running out of time as I scored boundary after boundary. However, then I got out and we lost 4 wickets soon after. Eventually, we lost the game by 6 or 7 runs. The same thing happened against England in a similar situation. We were chasing 380 runs and Yuvraj and I were batting. He tried a shot.
That's when I told him that ten years ago, it was one of the darkest times, we lost a game we were about to win because of reckless shots.
Let's not disrespect the game. Let's continue our partnership, finish it, and let's go smiling back to the dressing room. I shared with Yuvi a lesson I'd learnt ten years ago. All the mistakes we make happen in front of a million people, so we need to train ourselves for that.
'I've left some things for the next generation to follow and if that is my contribution as an Indian cricketer, then I think I have done a decent job. That's how I would like to be known-as someone who inspired the generation after.'
Perhaps the larger message India can learn from cricket and greats like Sachin is his impeccable behaviour on and off the field and the spirit of the Indian dressing room-a melting pot of cultures, religions, backgrounds coming together as Team India for a goal larger than themselves. Their religion: winning for India; their God: Sachin Tendulkar.
(Excerpted with permission of Penguin India from 'Defining India: Through Their Eyes' by Sonia Singh.)
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