“Chotu accha khelta hai!” At book launch, Vengsarkar, Zaheer, Gaekwad and co. remember many facets of Sachin Tendulkar

Nostalgia ran high at Mumbai’s Shanmukhananda Auditorium as the who’s who of Mumbai cricket turned up on Friday evening for the launch of a book on Sachin Tendulkar.
Former India cricketers like Dilip Vengsarkar, Zaheer Khan, Kiran More, Pravin Amre were joined former India coach Anshuman Gaekwad, cricket adminrator Ratnakar Shetty, commentator Harsha Bhogle, singer Shaan, and surgeon Dr Anant Joshi as ‘Scintillating Sachin – Story Beyond the Stats’, written Dwarkanath Sanzgiri, was unveiled on occasion of the Little Master turning 50 this year.
Sachin, wife Anjali and brother Ajit were in attendance at the event attended over 2000 people — some young enough to have only heard of Sachin’s exploits on the 22 yards from their parents or watched footage on YouTube while others were old enough to know what it was like to follow cricket action only via radio commentary.
Many iterations of Sachin came forth as former teammates shared anecdotes. Everyone shared a version of Sachin, each one offering a different facet of him: from the boy wonder to the legend.
One of Dilip Vengsarkar’s earliest memories of Sachin was watching him take on the Indian cricket team bowlers at a nets session in Mumbai, just days after the teenager had starred for his school Shardashram at the Harris Shield final.
“It was Vasu Paranjape who brought him along to the Indian nets. He was in love with him. He’d dragged me out of a match to watch him play in the Harris Shield final. I was the captain so he told me to ask the Indian bowlers at the nets to bowl to him. Despite our initial reservations, I got Kapil and others to bowl to him.”
More also reminisced watching India’s best bowlers have a go at a young Tendulkar at those nets. Somewhere during that session, Kapil, then a World Cup winning captain, walked past More and put his seal of approval on the young boy with a short line: ‘Chhotu accha khelta hai.’
“It was rare for Kapsy to shower praise so quickly on someone,” said More, who added he saw the young Sachin hit an on-drive and realised in a flash that he was special.
There were other equally hard-to-please men who Tendulkar impressed.
Amre had seen Sachin’s skill melt the hard exterior of their coach Ramakant Achrekar. “Sir once told me “haa hero aahe (he’s a hero)’. That was unusual,” he said.
Just years after Sachin made his debut, he was batting at Perth in what was the fifth Test. Despite the perilous and lively pitch, and the Australian pace battery hell-bent on exploiting it, Sachin scored 114 in the first innings. More, standing at the non-striker’s end, remembered the ‘khadoos’ Australians begrudgingly making stunned faces at each other as the puny Sachin, still 18 years old, towered over them.
Gaekwad, who coached the Indian team during the famous Sharjah series, spoke of how a 30-minute conversation with a young Sachin — long before Desert Storm — at a restaurant was enough to tell him there was something different about him.
“As I spoke, the boy hung onto every word, staring back at me unblinkingly,” he said.
Bhogle spoke of Sachin as a bowler trying so many variations that graphics producers would ask him whether they should use a card on the screen identifying him as a right-arm medium or right-arm offspin or right-arm legspin bowler.
Zaheer spoke of how he was tricked into calling Sachin sir, before realising in one conversation itself how down to earth he was. Soon the sir was dropped, as were the inhibitions. Zaheer recollected how Sachin would soon help him plot dismissals of batters like Michael Vaughn in 2002 and 2007.
Singer Shaan remembered a friendly match as captain leading a team against Sachin’s where the India legend tricked him into getting stumped — “a mark of his competitiveness” — but also yielded the bat to a obstinate kid who wanted to bat — “a sign of how humble he is”.
When life came full circle for Sachin
As the night passed, Sachin was invited on the stage to talk about his career. During that, he spoke of how life has come full circle in a way.
Talking about his brother Ajit’s contribution to his career, Sachin narrated how the older Tendulkar would hide and watch him play.
“After I started playing the leather ball, in the initial few games I got out early. I lapsed into giving excuses that the ball stayed low or something. Then I started to realise that since my family members were coming to watch me bat, that was making me conscious. Ajit realised that. After that, I never once saw Ajit while batting, but he could always see me on the crease. He would hide behind trees to watch me bat,” recollected Sachin.
Earlier this year, when Sachin’s son Arjun made his debut against KKR at the Wankhede Stadium in IPL, he pulled a leaf out of Ajit’s book.
“I didn’t want that image of the big screen where there was a split screen with Arjun on the field and me in the team dugout. So I went up to the dressing room and watched the game from there.”