The best thing about Sachin Tendulkar’s autobiography—Playing It My Way—is that it gives us an opportunity to know the man in his own words. For someone who played his first Test as a 16-year-old and played cricket at the highest level for 24 years, life has had to be a fascinating journey. The book highlights almost everything except the Cronje-gate and match-fixing controversies that had threatened the very foundation of the game at the turn of the century. But more on that later.
The book starts off with Tendulkar’s childhood and the segment is enthralling. In his first years at Shardashram Vidyamandir, Tendulkar would take four buses and trains from his family home to get there. Bus conductors would try and charge him for two tickets because of his cricket kit. “It could be embarrassing because the conductors were often rude,” writes Tendulkar. His response was wrapping the kitbag around him so that it became an extension of his body.
“With time I evolved a way of wrapping the kitbag around me. Just as the helmet and pads became a part of me while batting, so the kitbag became an extension of me on the bus,” he writes. Tendulkar spoke very little during his career as a top-flight cricketer. He, however, pours his heart out in his autobiography. Take, for instance, the portion where he talks about the late Mike Denness, the English match referee who had accused him of ball tampering during the tour of South Africa in 2001. Tendulkar was shocked and seriously considered leaving the tour because he didn’t like to be called a ‘cheat’. He couldn’t take the ‘humiliation’ of being accused wrongly, when he was trying to clean dirt off the ball. “I wasn’t prepared to let it pass. I informed Mike Denness that I would complain about the allegation…” Eventually, he had his way. Denness’ career as a match referee was soon over.
‘Monkeygate’ in 2007-08 was a bigger issue. India were on the verge of walking out of their tour Down Under after Harbhajan Singh was punished by match referee Mike Procter for his alleged racial slur towards Andrew Symonds at the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG). The sledging battle was heating up and eventually Singh’s patience snapped.
“I want to state very clearly that the incident arose because Andrew Symonds had been continually trying to provoke Bhajji and it was inevitable that the two would have an altercation at some point. While walking up to Bhajji to try to calm things down, I heard him say, ‘Teri maa ki’ (your mother…) to Symonds. It is an expression we often use in North India to vent our anger and to me it was all part of the game,” writes Tendulkar.
“That was the start of the controversy that almost caused the tour to be called off. I thought the matter had ended with Bhajji’s dismissal and later I was surprised when I was told that the Australians had lodged a formal complaint at the end of that day’s play, apparently alleging that Bhajji had called Symonds a ‘monkey’, which was being treated as a racial insult,” he writes.
“Mike Procter (match referee) did not look very convinced by our version of events and we found it surprising that he asked us to wait in our dressing room till well past midnight. The controversy had started to cast a pall over the series. After the hearing, there was serious ill-feeling between the two teams and we felt betrayed by the turn of events,” he writes.
“I stated exactly what I had heard and seen and also said that I had taken exception to us being labelled ‘liars’ by the match referee, Mike Procter, who had mentioned in his statement that ‘I believe one group is telling the truth’,” he writes.
“That he banned Bhajji for three Test matches seemed to us to show which group, in his opinion, was lying. It is never a pleasant thing to be called a liar and I was extremely angry,” Tendulkar goes on. He, along with then India captain Anil Kumble, led the boycott call and a unanimous decision was taken to walk out of the tour.
“We were fully prepared to accept the consequences…” In the end, however, the ban was revoked and a major crisis was avoided. In between, there was Multan in 2004, where stand-in captain Rahul Dravid declared the innings while Tendulkar was batting on 194. India won the Test, but Tendulkar’s disappointment on missing out on a personal milestone suggested how much he would have loved to score a double hundred in Pakistan.
The chapter that deals with Greg Chappell’s tenure as India coach is perhaps the most controversial. Tendulkar describes the Australian as a ‘ringmaster’, who had dropped in at his place only a few months before the 2007 World Cup, with an offer to take charge of the team, toppling Rahul Dravid. This segment, ever since it has seen the light of the day, has caused a huge uproar. Tendulkar never liked Chappell, for he believed the latter was unduly harsh on the Indian greats. Little wonder then that he was happy to see his back after a disastrous World Cup.
“Indian cricket was going nowhere under Chappell,” he writes. It would be interesting to know Chappell’s side of the story.
The book is full of interesting anecdotes and provides an insight into Tendulkar’s personal life—his courtship with Anjali, his love for fish and prawn curry, baigan bharta and varan bhaat cooked by his mother and how his son Arjun got angry when one of his friends criticised his father. “Arjun punched the boy and told him not to say anything bad about his father again,” he writes.
However, his casual references to match-fixing are disappointing. “Cricket plummeted to a low in the wake of the match-fixing scandal. The credibility of the game had been compromised and I found the revelations about matches being thrown for money distasteful and disgusting. The integrity of our sport was in doubts,” he says.
For cricket’s sake, he should have dug deeper into the matter. His erstwhile teammates Mohammad Azharuddin, Manoj Prabhakar and Ajay Jadeja were handed bans for their alleged involvement in match-fixing. Tendulkar had every right to seek an explanation from them for letting down Indian cricket.
Overall, it’s a good read, a little overuse of cliches notwithstanding. It has already become the best-selling book in India in its category, surpassing Steve Jobs’ biography. Expected, for it chronicles the life and career of the ‘god of cricket’.
Playing it My Way
Sachin Tendulkar
Hachette
Rs 899
Pp 497