By Anshuman Gaekwad
To me, Sachin Tendulkar has been the gold standard of batsmanship.
He has been confident but there has never been a trace of overconfidence all his cricketing life. If anything, he wanted to learn and learn, and keep getting better all the time. He was never satisfied with a 100 or even a 200, and even today you can see his passion for cricket which has kept him going for 24 long years.
Forget about performing for that long, just playing for 24 years is phenomenal. Sachin hasn’t just played for 24 years at the highest level, he has been a champion all through that period and that simply takes one’s breath away.
His approach, his focus and his desire to learn all the time ensured that he remained grounded, much like Rahul Dravid and Anil Kumble. It’s no coincidence that these men played for as long as they did, with the results that they produced during that period.
My favourite Sachin memories in one-day cricket are packed into a three-day stretch in April 1998. We had got ourselves into a corner and were facing elimination going into the last league match against Australia. We could afford to lose, but we had to minimise the margin of defeat in that case to make it to the final. Sachin and I used to share a row on the team bus, and on the way back from the ground after practice the night before the match, I told him that I wanted some to play a big knock the following day. After the briefest of pauses, he said, “I will do it.” I just looked quizzically at him and he said again, “I will do it.”
The way he said it was astonishing. It was as if ‘doing it’was the easiest thing in the world, like playing marbles or something. At the team meeting, I told the rest of the batting ground that the innings should revolve around Sachin, and that the others should play second fiddle. ‘Let him take the lead and you guys stay with him and create partnerships’ is what I told them.
On our way to the ground from Dubai the following day, Sachin caught hold of my hand and I saw that he was sweating. I was a little alarmed and told him not to put himself under pressure, I told him I wasn’t pushing him. Here he was, sweating in an air-conditioned bus, and he says to me, “No, this is a good sign, it only shows I am geared up for battle.”
The way he batted that day was out of this world. It is one of the finest one-day innings I have seen. Everything hit the sweet spot of the bat, the ball went where he wanted it to. The timing was immaculate, and the sixes were struck effortlessly enough to make the ground look small. There was this sandstorm during his partnership with Laxman and Sachin was a little worried during that break, but once he went back out, he was blazing away after a cautious early part.
When he scored his hundred, he pointed his bat at me, but it wasn’t until India had reached the total that ensured our qualification to the final that he celebrated, with a punched fist.
After the game, we were out in the ground celebrating and congratulating each other, and were joined by Mark Mascarenhas of Worldtel and the Coca-Cola boss. I had told Sachin I needed another hundred in the final and he said done, so I asked Mark to speak to the Coca-Cola head and ask him to announce a Mercedes for Sachin if he scored a 100 in the final, which was on his 25th birthday.
That night, as we returned to the hotel close to midnight, Sachin wanted to discuss his batting with me. I told him to get some sleep but he was insistent, and he said he wasn’t getting the elevation he needed on his sixes.
I told him that was because he was getting too close to the ball to get under it, something I had jotted down in my small diary even as he was batting. The hundred in the final was just the way Sachin wanted it, the ball going where and how he wanted it to go. He converted a lot of good balls into bad ones, which is what separates the great from the very good. The Australian bowlers were awestruck.
The previous night, Kasprowicz had asked how they could stop Sachin and I said you can’t. The only one who could get Sachin out was Sachin himself.
After the presentation, when he won the man of the match and tournament awards, came the announcement of a Mercedes 600 as gift. Well deserved too, I would say. Sachin has been a champion batsman all the way through. His mental preparation for the big game, the big occasion, and the way he handled the pressure of expectations time after time, it’s something that has always amazed me. And those two hundreds at Sharjah formalised his place in the cricketing pantheon.
