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  SACHIN:

  A Hundred

  Hundreds

  Now

  V. KRISHNASWAMY

  This book is dedicated to my father R. Viswanathan, who was initially sceptical about my choice of career as a sports writer, but later became my most ardent fan and critic. He would have been most happy to see this work, because for him Sachin Tendulkar embodied all that a sportsman should be.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Foreword by Ramakant Achrekar

  Introduction by Rahul Dravid

  1 1990: Dawn of a New Era

  2 1992: Of Legends, History and Emotional Contests

  3 1993: A Century at Home

  4 1994: The First ODI Century

  5 1995: A Winning Hundred at Sharjah

  6 1996: The Flowering of a Legend

  7 1997: More Centuries Than Years

  8 1998: An Australia Special

  9 1999: Playing through Pain

  10 2000: Freed from Captaincy

  11 2001: The Coming of Age of Indian Cricket

  12 2002: Going Past the Don’s Mark

  13 2003: Modest By His Own Lofty Standards

  14 2004: Joining Gavaskar on Mount

  15 2005: A New Peak in a Low Year

  16 2006: Injuries Amidst Scrutiny

  17 2007: Nineteen Months Later

  18 2008: Gathering Them In

  19 2009: Reaching 30,000

  20 2010: An ODI Double

  21 2011: All About the World Cup

  22 2012: The Wait Is Over

  At a Glance

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Author’s Note

  Copyright

  FOREWORD

  RAMAKANT ACHREKAR

  Over the last 20 years and more, so much has been written about Sachin Tendulkar, yet I wonder if any of us, he himself, I or all his countless fans and followers, had imagined how big he would make it. Though I must confess that even when Ajit Tendulkar, his brother, first brought the young Sachin to the nets, there was something so natural about his game that it seemed he was born only to play cricket.

  A hundred hundreds in international cricket! It was and is still unthinkable. And I am glad I am still around to see it. It has indeed been my greatest joy to see him achieve this landmark.

  As a player, Sachin was a natural, and there was really nothing major I needed to change. Countless stories have been written on how he grew and matured in cricket. But I feel his biggest asset was his ability to listen, imbibe and work on his game. He just needed to be told once.

  This past year, I often got upset when he got out time and again for scores that should have been converted into hundreds. Sometimes he was unlucky but many other innings should have produced centuries.

  During this time, it was saddening to hear people say that Sachin was past his prime and should retire from the game. I feel he still has a lot to offer and has some more years left in him.

  His cricketing talent apart, Sachin’s family played a big role in his development – just as he now helps with his team members. Whether it is the Indian team, the Mumbai Ranji or any other team that he plays for, it is like a family to him. When he started out, his father Ramesh supported him and his brother Ajit was always around him and it has always been like that.

  Most of his traits, whether on or of the field, are from that time and they have held him in good stead. Yes, he is talented way above all the rest, but he also ensures it stays that way with his hard work.

  I feel a very crucial decision in his life and cricket came when his family decided to shift him to Sharadashram School. His father and brother and, of course, Sachin himself, agreed to move from the Indian Education Society’s New English School, close to his house in Bandra (East), to Sharadashram, which was known more for cricket. Sachin’s devotion to the game was such that even at a young age he was willing to travel every day for almost an hour between home and school to play cricket, and his family backed him all the way.

  Yes, it feels great to see how he has reached the very top. He has a hundred hundreds, but for him, as it has always been for me, it is more important to see the team do well. That gives him more satisfaction. One only needed to see his smile when India won the World Cup to understand his joy. Few know how disappointed he feels when he scores a century but the team does not win.

  Cricket has given a lot to Sachin, just as he has given a lot back to it. He does it in his own ways, through his cricketing performances, but also through his personal interactions and charities, which he doesn’t talk about. He turns to those close to him and to those he trusts for advice and suggestions and in the end, he does what his heart tells him to do. And it always seems right, just as the shot he selects to play each ball.

  A century of centuries it is, but there is so much more that he will give to cricket and to all those around him in the years to come, which can never be measured in runs.

  God bless Sachin. He has been a role model for more than one generation and has given all of us so much joy for almost a quarter of a century.

  INTRODUCTION

  RAHUL DRAVID

  Even though Sachin Tendulkar is about my age, actually a little younger, by the time I came into the Indian team, he had been there for nearly seven years. He was one of the senior players in the side and one of the very best in the game.

  He is considered one of the best after Sir Don Bradman, though it is unfair to compare players from such different eras. Without dispute, he is one of the greatest cricketers the world has seen.

  It was an absolute thrill to be a part of the same team and to have played so much with Sachin. We batted together for hours, in different formats and on different grounds, and each time, it was an education.

  I have had several notable partnerships with Sachin, but the one I remember most is the one from the first innings of the third Test in Chennai in the 2001 series against Australia. Sachin was at his best and reached the century with a six to set up the match for us. We won the Test and the series. The partnership (169 for the fifth wicket) was a very important one and it came against a very high quality attack including Glen McGrath, Jason Gillespie and Shane Warne.

  Being at the other end from him made for great viewing and I learnt a lot from it. It gave me the chance to see what made him tick, his cricketing skills, balance while batting, and the way he played his shots. He has an amazing hunger for runs and a burning desire to do well for the team.

  For me, the two centuries that stand out and best exemplify Sachin’s skills and ability to adapt, were those against Australia at Sydney in 2004 and against Pakistan at Chennai in 1999.

  In Sydney, he was coming of a diffcult time, getting out to shots on the of side. So he cut those out. It was not just about skill but also a great exhibition of grit and determination. He went on to score an unbeaten double century in the game.

  Against Pakistan in 1999, we needed 271 for a win and he took us there almost single-handedly. We needed just 17 to win, which seemed simple with Sachin still there after a brilliant century, even as the others fell apart. But once he left, we lost by 12 runs. It was a great knock, which unfortunately did not fetch us a win.

  Sachin is not the chest-thumping type; he leads by example and is very consistent in everything he does. He is a man of few words, but when he does speak, you listen, because there is so much to learn from him. That is why he commands a great deal of respect around the world.

  I always preferred to sit back and watch him. Being in the same room as him gave me a chance to do that very of en. I was lucky to be able to have such a vantage position. I could see the way he batted, the way he carried himself, his tactics, and the way he would address a situ
ation. One can have the right skills and tactics but what makes Sachin different is his ability to execute them.

  It was an honour to share the dressing room with him. He was one of my biggest motivators, right from the time I came into the team, and it has stayed that way through my entire career.

  (as told to V. Krishnaswamy)

  CHAPTER 1

  1990

  Dawn of a New Era

  Innings of Rare Temperament and Skill Propels Tendulkar to Stardom

  ‘He looked the embodiment of India’s famous opener (Sunil) Gavaskar, and indeed was wearing a pair of his pads. While he displayed a full repertoire of strokes in compiling his maiden Test hundred, most remarkable were his of side shots from the back foot. Though only 5ft 5in tall, he was still able to control without difficulty short deliveries from the English paceman -Wisden Almanack, 1991

  THE SITUATION

  Sachin Tendulkar had made his debut in Karachi against a Pakistani attack that included Imran Khan, Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis, who also made his debut in that Test. In the four Tests against Pakistan, Tendulkar had scored 215 runs with two fifties, one each at Faisalabad and Sialkot. In the series against New Zealand that followed, he got out for 88 in the second Test at Napier and is said to have cried in private for having missed a maiden century.

  Then came the series in England. It was Tendulkar’s first visit to England and only his third series. He was just 17 years old, he had no centuries to his name, and yet he was already being spoken of as a legend in the making. Talent and skill were the traits associated with his game, consistency was yet to become a part of it.

  RELIVING THE CENTURY

  The Test match at Old Trafford, Manchester was Tendulkar’s ninth. Indian fans seemed to outnumber the locals in the stands that day. Graham Gooch had won the toss and put on 225 runs for the first wicket with Michael Atherton. Gooch scored a century, his third successive hundred. Atherton and Robin Smith too made centuries as England piled up 519.

  India lost three wickets for 57 before Mohammad Azharuddin came in and scored 179 runs. He put on 189 runs with Sanjay Manjrekar (93) and then Tendulkar, after taking 54 minutes to get of the mark, hung in to score 68. England got an 87-run lead. In their second innings, England declared at 320 for 4, with Alan Lamb scoring 109.

  Set to chase 408 for a win in 88 overs, India were staring at a target that was two runs more than their own record, achieved against West Indies in 1976. Let alone a victory, even a draw seemed a distant dream as India plummeted from 109 for two to 183 for six. Manjrekar, Dilip Vengsarkar, Azharuddin and Kapil Dev departed - some succumbing to the pressure and others to wayward shots.

  Tendulkar, wearing his mentor Sunil Gavaskar’s pads, had battled for three hours and forty-five minutes on a pitch that did not have any demons, save a batsman’s impatience. When Manoj Prabhakar walked in to join him at No. 8, Tendulkar was on 38. India still had two hours and 20 minutes to bat out. Both Tendulkar and Prabhakar survived a dropped catch each and then they made England pay for their lapses. Eddie Hemmings had dropped Tendulkar at 10, a figure that would become Sachin’s very own when cricketers’ jerseys started sporting numbers.

  With about 11 overs to go, Tendulkar, then on 98, drove Fraser past mid-of and ran three to go past the barrier that every batsman dreams of crossing. The landmark hundred had been achieved and the Test saved by a man just 17 years and 112 days of age.

  Tendulkar, not yet of voting age, had played the innings of his life. His unbeaten 119 with Prabhakar (67 not out) saved India from certain defeat. England gave up their attempt to win the game when India were 343 for 6, with only two mandatory overs left.

  Tendulkar, by his own admission, was so shy that it took him some time to raise his bat to acknowledge the standing ovation he got all around as he steered India to a draw.

  His Man of the Match award earned him a bottle of Champagne, which he did not drink, and £500, which he may have deservedly splurged. He was mobbed and hugged, and kissed by older women. He was the toast of the world that day, as he would remain for the next two decades and more.

  Richie Benaud in the commentary box called it ‘an innings of temperament, skill and delightful stroke play.’

  It was the first of many.

  Did you know…

  » Anil Kumble made his Test debut in this match. He took three wickets in the first innings; none in the second. In his first Test innings, he did get to bat briefly with Tendulkar at the other end and scored two before being run out. Kumble would play his next Test more than 26 months later.

  » Mohammad Azharuddin became the first Indian to score a century in a single session between lunch and tea on the third day.

  LEGENDS IN THE MAKING

  Thirty months older than Tendulkar, Viswanathan Anand (born 11 December 1969) was the first Asian to win the World Junior Chess Championship and became India’s first Grandmaster in 1987, while Tendulkar was piling up runs in school cricket. Then, in 1990, Anand won the Asian Zonals and qualified for the Inter-zonals, where he finished third to become the first Indian to qualify for the Candidates Matches leading to the World Championship. The same year Anand finished joint first in what was then the highest category event in India, the Triveni Super Grandmasters Tournament in Delhi.

  Leander Paes (born 17 June 1973), barely nine weeks younger than Tendulkar, also began making waves in 1990. The Kolkata lad, son of hockey Olympian Vece Paes and Jennifer Paes, former captain of the Indian basketball team, won the 1990 Wimbledon Junior title and rose to No. 1 in the junior world rankings. It was to be the first of many landmarks that Paes would fashion in his career.

  THIS ALSO HAPPENED IN 1990

  Approximately three months before Tendulkar scored his first Test hundred on 14 August 1990, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, a British engineer, computer scientist and MIT Professor, along with another Belgian computer scientist, Robert Cailliau, used a NeXT Computer to propose the use of ‘HyperText’ to link and access information of various kinds. This led to the creation of the first web browser and the WorldWideWeb (www) on 12 November 1990. Just over a month later, at Christmas, he implemented a successful communication between an HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) client and a server through the Internet. The rest, as they say, is history.

  But before that, in March 1989, eight months before Tendulkar made his Test debut against Pakistan (15 November 1989), Berners-Lee used a NeXT Computer developed, manufactured and sold by Steve Jobs’ (of Apple fame) company to develop the world’s first web server. Jobs went on to make Apple one of the most profitable companies in the world and the Internet has since become an integral part of our lives.

  On 3 October 1990, seven weeks after Tendulkar’s maiden ton, the two Germanys came together and Berlin re-united into a single city. That was 11 months after the Berlin Wall was brought down (9 November 1989).

  Six months before his first three-figure innings, on 11 February 1990, as Tendulkar adjourned for the day at 80 not out at McLean Park, Napier in a Test against New Zealand, halfway across the world at Cape Town in South Africa, Nelson Mandela was walking out a free man after spending twenty-seven-and-a-half years in three different prisons, including the dreaded Robben Island. Mandela would change the destiny of his country, as Tendulkar would change that of cricket.

  Less than two weeks before Tendulkar’s epic knock, on 2 August 1990, Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi troops rolled into Kuwait in an invasion that sparked of the Gulf War and sent oil prices spiralling. Only a month earlier, in July, the Western Alliance had ended the Cold War and proposed joint action with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

  In what was a highly eventful year, Margaret Thatcher resigned as the British prime minister on 22 November and six days later, a cricket lover, John Major, succeeded her to the position. Two weeks later, on 9 December, Polish trade union leader Lech Walesa won his country’s presidential election.

  In India, on 25 June, seven weeks before Tendulkar’s first century, the BSE Sensex for the first t
ime touched the four-digit figure, closing at 1,001.

  There was a lot of political turmoil too as the then prime minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh tried to implement the Mandal Commission recommendations. This led to an attempt at self-immolation by a Delhi student Rajiv Goswami, who was saved in the nick of time. But before the year was over, another student, Surinder Singh Chauhan, had died due to self-immolation.

  In sport, there was ignominy for India at the Auckland Commonwealth Games (January-February 1990) with weightlifter Subrata Pal testing positive for banned substances. It was the first time ever that an Indian had tested positive. Three weeks later, in February, the Indian hockey team finished tenth among 12 teams at the World Cup in Lahore, Pakistan. In September, at the Asian Games in Beijing, India managed just one gold, from kabaddi. P.T. Usha lost for the first time in 400m since 1983.

  Through all of this, Tendulkar brought joy to a cricket-mad nation.

  CHAPTER 2

  1992

  Of Legends, History and Emotional Contests

  Sachin Tendulkar had caught the imagination of all those who had the privilege of seeing him bat but the avalanche of centuries that was to become his trademark was yet to come. The year 1991 was barren: in four Tests and 14 ODIs, he failed to get to the three-figure mark. This was the first and last time he would go an entire year without a century in either format.

  After that maiden century in August 1990, it took Sachin nearly 17 months to get to the three-figure mark. But by the time the year was over, he had two centuries in Australia, one each at Sydney and Perth, both absolute gems, and he added a third in South Africa in a historic series.

  Tendulkar Wins the First Meeting of the Legends

  ‘Each and every stroke deserved to be stood up and applauded’ - Bill Lawry in the commentary box

  THE SITUATION

  It was the first meeting of two legends who would dominate their world like none before. Sachin Tendulkar, four years junior to Shane Warne, was already into his fourteenth Test when the blonde and long-haired Shane Warne made his debut at Sydney in the third Test of a series that Australia was dominating. They had won the first two Tests by 10 and 8 wickets respectively. Tendulkar had scored a modest 16, 7, 15 and 40. Then came Sydney.