“Main Khelega” (“I’ll Play”)
After the 15-year-old Vaibhav Sooryavanshi had amassed the most runs at this year’s Indian Premier League, the former South African fast bowler Dale Steyn commented, “You think of guys like Sachin, Virat, and this kid is going to explode. He’s going to be bigger than both of them put together at the end of his career.”
Hmm, we will let Steyn hold on to his opinion. And we will talk about Virat Kohli another time. Let’s talk about Sachin Tendulkar.
When Sooryavanshi made his international debut against England in a T20 game at Old Trafford this year, he was 15 years and 99 days old. He became the youngest Indian to play in an international match. Comparisons with Tendulkar, who made his debut at 16 years and 205 days, are obvious. Sooryavanshi faced a bowling attack comprising of Jofra Archer, Josh Tongue and Will Jacks (He didn’t face Sam Curran, Liam Dawson and Adil Rashid) and scored 14 runs in 10 balls. His other scores in the series were 13 and 15.
Tendulkar faced Pakistan in a Test match at Karachi in 1989. He scored 15 off 24 balls before getting out to another debutant, Waqar Younis. The other bowlers included Wasim Akram, Imran Khan and Abdul Qadir. By the time these four Pakistani bowlers retired, they had 1,385 wickets in Tests and 1,232 wickets in One Day Internationals (ODIs). In the second Test at Faisalabad, Tendulkar made his first half-century, a gritty 59 out of an Indian total of 288.
Speaking of T20s format. On that tour, an ODI had been abandoned because of bad light. Instead, a 20-over exhibition game was organized. India were chasing 157 and needed 69 in about five remaining overs. Tendulkar was at the crease with captain, Krishnamachari Srikkanth. Tendulkar had hammered young spinner, Mushtaq Ahmed for a couple of sixes when Abdul Qadir walked up to him and said, “Bachchon ko kyon mar rahe ho? Hamein bhi maar [kar] dikhao” (“Why are you hitting the kid? Hit me too”). Tendulkar didn’t respond. Later, Srikkanth talked about Tendulkar’s knock, “it was one of the best innings I have seen.” Tendulkar tore into Qadir’s next over as he hit 6,0,4,6,6,6. He went on to score 53 runs in 18 balls.
Comparisons between players of different time periods and in different formats is difficult. The jury is still out on Sooryavanshi and we wish him the best.
In the fourth Test at Sialkot, Tendulkar came in to bat with India in a spot of bother at 38 for 4. A nasty short ball from Waqar hit Tendulkar on his nose. As blood began to stain his gloves and shirt, the physio rushed to the field. Helmets in those days didn’t have the front grille. Navjot Sidhu, the non-striker suggested to Tendulkar to retire hurt and return to the pavilion. However, the determined Tendulkar send the physio back and told Sidhu, “Main khelega” (“I’ll play”). Even as he sports that scar on his nose, Tendulkar rates the 57 he scored over four hours and helped save India as “the key innings of my life.”
Zen Floating Technique
During the 1996 World Cup, an 87-year-old Sir Don Bradman was watching an India game at his Adelaide home. He walked from his living room to call his wife Jessie to watch Tendulkar bat. Bradman asked his wife, “Who does this remind you of?” Later he admitted that, “I never saw myself play, but I feel that this player is playing much the same [way] I used to play.”
What batting was Bradman referring to? Tendulkar explained to a group of youngsters at Hampshire in 2002. He said that great batting has little to do with feet movement but more to do with the speed of hands and the stillness of the head. He elaborated that “this stillness, should be both physical and mental: both about a state of perfect preparedness, and about avoiding commitment to any movement until that movement is inevitable.”
Tendulkar’s preparedness is best evaluated when he disappeared for a full week ahead of the Australian tour to India in 1998. He was preparing for Shane Warne, arguably the greatest leg spinner in the world. He took several young spinners to the nets and asked them to bowl in the rough as he visualized Warne would bowl to him. He practiced the sweep over and over again until his arms and back went sore. Warne later wrote in his autobiography that he was ‘Tendulcorised’ and had nightmares about Tendulkar coming down the wicket toward him.
In psychology, the “flow mental state” describes a zone in which a person is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus and involvement. Mark Nicholas in his book, A Beautiful Game calls it Tendulkar’s “floating technique”, a dream-like state where he responded intuitively to conditions and tactics.
The Observer Sports Monthly quotes Tendulkar, “It is important that you play not with your conscious, but with your subconscious…And when you reach the peak of your concentration, you will not even notice whether the bowler is at you from around the wicket or over the wicket. All you will see is the ball, and then your subconscious mind will do the rest.”
This concentration reminds us of a story from Hindu epic Mahabharata. Once Dronacharya was teaching archery to young princes. He set up a bird on a tree and invited his students, one at a time, to shoot it. As he called up the princes to take aim, he would ask them what they saw. All of them saw the bird and tree and leaves. Dronacharya asked each of them to put down the bow and step back. When it was prince Arjuna’s turn, Dronacharya posed the same question.
“What do you see?”
Arjuna replied, “The eye of the bird.”
Dronacharya asked, “Can you see the tree?”
Arjuna answered, “No, only the eye of the bird.”
A proud Dronacharya ordered him to take the shot. Then he turned to the other pupils and said, “When you want to achieve something, you must focus on it. Close out all other distractions and concentrate only on your target.”
He Carried the Burden of the Nation
Tendulkar’s influence on Indian cricket and cricketers is immense. He provided the mix of risk-taking intent and improvisation that is the hallmark of modern-day Indian cricketers. In the movie M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story, a young Dhoni sees a poster of Tendulkar at a local market and begs his mother to buy it for him. One of Dhoni’s childhood friends confessed, “There used to be a big Tendulkar poster above his head in the room where he used to sleep.”
Under Dhoni’s leadership, India won the 2011 World Cup where Tendulkar was their top scorer in the tournament. During the victory lap, Tendulkar was carried around by his teammates on their shoulders. One of his teammates, Virat Kohli said, “Sachin has carried the burden of the nation for 21 years. It was our turn to carry him on our shoulders.”
Modern day great and English Test captain, Joe Root, who is approaching Tendulkar’s record for most Test runs recently said, “It’s remarkable what Sachin Tendulkar achieved in the game. You have to believe me when I say that to even be in the conversation with him is enough for me. The guy made his Test debut before I was born and played in my Test debut! His longevity in itself is remarkable and then you look at the runs he got in Test cricket…but not only that, he’s got 50 ODI hundreds, too.”
And his impact on the cricket loving nation? Tarun Tejpal, the managing editor of the Outlook wrote in a special issue in 1998, “Indians are lucky that a short, gifted man can, with a few swishes of his wand, take away the cares and drudgery of their lives and transport them to a 22-yard pleasure palace where the onslaught of disease and the price of onions is for fleeting hours no more real than a distant mirage.”
Sources
“A Cricketer as ‘Balm of the Nation’” by Manu Joseph, The New York Times, March 16, 2011
“A suitable beginning – Tendulkar takes Qadir on”, www.cricinfo.com
“Joe Root on Tendulkar, McCullum and the art of batting: ‘If cricket is all about you, it’s a depressing sport to play’ by James Wallace, The Athletic, May 22, 2026
“In Sun and Shadow” by Sidhant Patnaik, Dileep Premachandran, The Caravan, December 31, 2014
“The God of Big Things” by Bobby Ghosh, Time, May 21, 2012
“Sachin Tendulkar” by Simon Robinson, Time, November 13, 2006
“I dream of genius…”, Observer Sports Monthly, August 4, 2002
“Eye of the Bird” by R. Krithika, The Hindu, July 16, 2019
A Beautiful Game: My love affair with cricket by Mark Nicholas
“Sachin Tendulkar on top of world” by Mike Atherton, The Times, October 18, 2008