Former Indian cricketers Dilip Vengsarkar, Zaheer Khan, Kiran More, Praveen Amre, and former Indian national team coach Anshuman Gaekwad, cricket administrator Ratnakar Shetty, commentator Harsha Bhogle, singer Shaan and surgeon Dr. Anant Joshi presented the book Scintillating Sachin – Story Beyond the Stats, written by Dwarkanath Sanzgiri, on the occasion of the little master’s 50th birthday.
Sachin, his wife Anjali and brother Ajit attended the event, which was attended by more than 2,000 people — some of whom were young enough to have only heard of Sachin’s 22-yard exploits from their parents or watched footage on YouTube, while others were old enough to know what it was like to follow the cricket action only through radio.
Numerous iterations of Sachin appeared as former teammates shared anecdotes. Each shared a different version of Sachin, each offering a different facet of his personality, from boy wonder to legend.
One of Dilip Vengsarkar’s earliest memories of Sachin is watching him play with the Indian cricket team’s bowlers at practice in Mumbai, just days after the teenager played for his school Shardashram in the Harris Shield final.
It was Vasu Paranjape who brought him to Indian practice. He was in love with him. He pulled me out of the match to watch him play in the Harris Shield finals. I was captain and he told me to ask the Indian bowlers at the net to bowl for him. Despite our initial doubts, I persuaded Kapil and others to bowl with him.
Mohr also recalled how the best Indian bowlers played with young Tendulkar at the net. Sometime during that session, Kapil, by then the World Cup-winning captain, walked past Mohr and put his seal of approval on the young lad with a short phrase: Chhotu accha khelta hai.
It was rare for Kapil to shower praise on someone so quickly, said Mohr, who added that he saw the young Sachin hit the ball and knew in an instant that he was special.
There were other people on whom Tendulkar made the same strong impression.
Amre saw how Sachin’s skill melted the tough exterior of their coach, Ramakant Achrekar. Sir once said to me: Haa hero aahe (he is a hero). That was unusual, he said.
Just a few years after Sachin’s debut, he was batting in Perth for the fifth test. NotwithstandingDespite a dangerous and lively pitch, and an Australian pace battery that was full of desire to take advantage of it, Sachin scored 114 runs in the fifth inning.The first inning. Mohr, who was in the no-hitter position, remembers the Aussies hadus awkwardly making stunned faces at each other as the shapely Sachin, who had yet to turn 18, towered over them.
Gaekwad, who coached the Indian team during the famous series in Sharjah, described how a 30-minute conversation with the young Sachin – long before Desert Storm – in a restaurant was enough to know that something had changed in him.
As I spoke, the boy clung to every word, never looking away from me, he said.
Bhogle talked about Sachin as a bowler trying so many variations that the graphics makers asked him if they should use a card on the screen designating him as a bowler playing right-hand medium, right-hand offspin or right-hand legspin.
Zaheer talked about how he was tricked into calling Sachin sir, after which in one conversation he realized how simple he was. Sir was soon discarded, as were the inhibitions. Zaheer recalled how Sachin soon helped him plan the rejection of batters like Michael Vaughn in 2002 and 2007.
Singer Shaan recalled a friendly match as team captain against Sachin in which the Indian legend tricked him into a stalemate — a sign of his competitiveness — but also lost the bat to a stubborn kid who wanted to bat — a sign of how humble he is.
When life came full circle for Sachin
When the evening passed, Sachin was invited on stage to talk about his career. In the course of his talk, he talked about how life had come full circle in a sense.
Speaking about his brother Ajit’s contribution to his career, Sachin described how the elder Tendulkar used to hide and watch him play.
After I started playing leather ball, in the first few games I would drop out early. I started making excuses that the ball was lying low or something like that. Then I started to realize that because my family members were coming to watch me hit, it forced me to be conscientious. Ajit understood that. After that I never once saw Ajit during a game, but he could always see me on the line. He would hide behind the trees to watch me hit, he recalled.nal Sachin.
Earlier this year, when Sachin’s son Arjun made his debut against KKR at Wankhede Stadium in the IPL, he took his example from Ajith.
I didn’t want that image on the big screen where there was a split screen with Arjun on the field and me in the team dugout. So I went over to the locker room and watched the game from there.