Playing a little too Straight : Sachin's Playing It My Way : A Book Review

Mathew Hayden’s unforgettable comment springs to mind, “I’ve seen God and He bats at Number Four for India”. If such a Divine intervention was possible and Indian cricket fans had their way, my date of birth would have been exactly 9 months BT.

I have to separate Sachin and the book and I will get back to why at a later stage. I was in Class XI when I first heard of Sachin. He had been picked for the Indian Test squad for the Pakistan series and I read his date of birth with disbelief. When the First Test began and Sachin got out for just 15, I actually felt relieved. How can someone who is 9 months younger play Test Cricket and succeed while so many cricket-crazy boys of the same age were expected to focus on academics and make men out of themselves?  I saw him in action in the Second Test and suffice to say that thereafter I paid more attention to his career than my own.

It was in the Fourth Test in that series ; when Waqar bowled that bouncer and Sachin was hit on his nose, my friend’s mother who was watching it along with us on TV, suddenly clenched her fist and exclaimed ‘kadankara pasangala’ (you lumpen elements !). Obviously it was directed at the Pakistani fast bowling quartet of Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Imran Khan and Aaquib Javed who made no allowance for a greenhorn playing his first series. Sachin evoked that kind of motherly feeling in women, who started praying for his success and as he grew and we started reading more about his background, he became one from our own households. The game itself transformed from being a boring sport watched by lazy boys and men over weekends, to one which rekindled the interest of everyone everywhere – the family, the school, the office, the community, the marketplace, the transport depot, the airport… If Sachin got out, it was because the ball was unplayable or they cheated.

I remember a double-wicket exhibition tournament called “MRF Pace Challenge” that was held in 1990 in which Sachin & Kambli were partners. The bowlers included some of the fastest bowlers of that time, most of them from West Indies. Sachin simply carted them all over the place so effortlessly that it felt as if they were bowling loose balls so that Sachin could entertain the crowd, which was certainly not the case.

My Board exams for Class XII were a few days after Sachin missed out narrowly on becoming the youngest player ever to score a Test century. Graduation exams came and went as we watched him get recognition as a world class player in the series against Australia and subsequently the 1992 World Cup. I couldn’t get back to studies for several days after India lost the World Cup Semi Final to Sri Lanka in 1996 despite Sachin’s heroics; notwithstanding that the Final professional exams that would determine my career were only weeks away. My dad once asked me jocularly (he himself was an ardent cricket lover and Sachin fan) “will Tendulkar come and write your exams?” . Obviously not, but if he did well, I felt he inspired us to do well too. The passion in his chosen career, the commitment to the teams’ cause, the pursuit of excellence, temperament, the head in the right place, the ultimate family man… Sachin was every youngster’s role model in many more ways than we openly acknowledged.

Sachin Tendulkar dominated the bowling like no one else could in the period between 1993 and 1998. I think those were his best years.  The World Cup of ’96 had quite a few stars, but he upstaged them all. In He would take risks and they would mostly come off.  Technically sound, belligerent when he wanted to be at his attacking best, with the temperament that only the blessed few have, Sachin was the most comprehensive player of that era, although Brian Lara was possibly the World’s best player and Mark Waugh was more stylish in execution.

The nation was smitten. Every foreign player, both past and current, would be asked by reporters leading questions: wasn’t Sachin the best player they’d ever seen? They couldn’t but agree and we would lap up every word written about him.

Let’s go over to the book now – his autobiography “Playing It My Way”. For all of us, Sachin has always been a morally correct person, dutiful to his parents and family, modest, self-effacing, brilliant player, multiple world-record buster, astute thinker, great trier with a never-say-die attitude. His book further reinforces that image. That’s about it. Unfortunately.

We all know what Sachin has achieved over the years. We wanted to hear him open out about matters which he held close to his chest and refused to talk about during his playing career. When I bought the book, I had already read somewhere that the book had some plain-speak, but was mostly copybook defence. I harboured the hope that I would read something that I hadn’t read before. I wasn’t disappointed.  Here are a few things that I didn’t know about Sachin : he carried his kit so close to his body on buses so that the conductors don’t abuse him for using up space; he was once awarded a special certificate by a Chef as he polished off a full-course fish meal; he drove long distances on two nights in England as a young Yorkshire recruit to fulfil his commitment in playing those games; in the pre-mobile era, he would often hang around outside Anjali’s house hoping to catch her attention and take her out during their courtship days; Virat Kohli touched his feet and sought his blessings after the World Cup Final match in 2011 that India won, etc. Make no mistake, these are wonderful to read and I read from cover to cover with unbridled joy. It was like reliving my years. Yet, the book read like a sports journalist’s account and not Sachin’s.

Here’s why :

(i)                  Vinod Kambli was once his best buddy. They were involved in a World record partnership as school kids – something that’s now part of cricketing folklore. Yet, there’s not one word about Vinod Kambli after 1996. Not even a reaction to Kambli’s much televised accusation that Sachin forgot about him.

(ii)                There was plenty of talk about how the 1991-92 Tour of Australia had many Indian players who were simply not committed enough to the team’s cause. The team lost 4-0 and there were several reports suggesting that the team partied late into the night and often did not practice together. Not a word.

(iii)               In 2000, the match-fixing controversy broke out and it threatened to disrupt the very foundations of the game. Sachin claims credit partly for bringing back the popularity of the opium of the masses, but makes not even a fleeting mention of match-fixing. He merely says he didn’t know enough, which is incredibly incredible.

(iv)              He hasn’t really described the quality of the players of his era whom he admired – bowlers whom he found difficult to handle, batsmen whom he admired for their class. I’ve read other books by great cricketers and invariably they are eloquent in their praise of the best players they’ve met. Sachin talks about his batting in some detail including some of the shots he played, his bowling with specific plans for specific players, he even goes onto describe a catch that he took detailing his thought processes (that triggers Rajini jokes in the mind), and when he describes about the performance of his fellow cricketers, he states the obvious with comments like ‘played well’, ‘played brilliantly’, etc. I would have loved to hear about his opinions on players like Carl Hooper, Graham Gooch, Steve and Mark Waugh, McGrath, Warne, Shaun Pollock, Jonty Rhodes, Inzamam-ul-Haq, Wasim & Waqar, who were all great players and some of my favourites. Perhaps he forgot that the book will be read globally. When I read autobiographies by Warne or Hayden, I first looked up the index and read what they had to say about Sachin.

(v)                The overwhelming impression that one draws about the second half of his career from the second half of his book is that it was a painful one. There were many injuries, many surgeries, involving multiple body parts. It degenerates into a saga of sacrifices that he had to make to painstakingly emerge from those injuries to contribute to the national cause. It was his chosen profession and if he was really enjoying his career, there was no need to labour over his injuries during what has been a fantastic career.

(vi)              He comes across as an extremely sentimental person. He probably is. But to say he ‘cried’ over this and that at such regular intervals throughout this journey would hardly evoke melodrama amongst his readers. In fact, to overemphasize, he goes to the extent of saying he burst into tears or even ‘cried and cried’. C’mon man…

Obviously, Sachin was the best cricketer India ever had. He entertained us like no one ever has or will. He doesn’t, unfortunately, come across as someone who, even remotely, holds any promise as an author. No one can argue though, it’s his book after all ! He has done his image no harm; the book will sell like hot cakes; and he has, one understands, already broken records for the best selling book by a sportsperson in India. But he won't get a second chance to write his first autobiography.