Sachin Tendulkar fanboy Rohit Sharma steps out of idol’s shadow (a little bit) with records-breaking knock | Cricket-world-cup News

In his schooldays, Rohit Sharma, an average student his own admission, was allergic to books. But he could not res borrowing The Making of a Cricketer, written Ajit Tendulkar on his younger brother Sachin, from a friend. In the book, the writer details the sacrifices and hard work that went behind the making of the man that Donald Bradman referred a the closest to him in style and technique.
Sharma read every single line of the book, perhaps reread too. He could suddenly relate to the legend.. “I could relate to his life. I know people will wonder how I found something common between his life and my life,” he once told this newspaper.
Their backgrounds were different. Tendulkar was brought up in a middle-class, intellectual household. Sharma used to sleep on the floor with his uncles in his grandfather’s house, away from his parents. But still, he found the vital, emotional connection. “That book gave me the feeling that I was in some way part of his universe as I realised that Sachin had played in the same school tournament in which I was playing in at that time,” he went on.

In the maidans and school, he always wanted to emulate Tendulkar, in demeanour, in strokes and attitude. Of course, Sharma’s game is quite different to Tendulkar’s. But none captured his imagination as vividly as Tendulkar did. He bunked his school to watch Tendulkar bat at a stadium for the first time in 2000-01, a Ranji game between Mumbai and Baroda at the MIG ground in Bandra. “I quietly picked my school bag during the break, got into a local train without buying a ticket I didn’t have a match pass but luckily there was a wooden stand erected alongside the road to allow those who didn’t have a pass to watch the game. Though the stand was full, I somehow managed to find some place near a tree that was beside the stand. What I recall is that Tendulkar batted brilliantly that day,” he had added. He, in fact, scored a sparkling 108. Most Read
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Then when Tendulkar started using MRF bats, Sharma too wanted to buy one. But it was too expensive. “Whenever I used to pass sports shops, I would stand and stare at MRF bats. I even searched for a MRF sticker to paste on my bat but couldn’t find one,” he said. Years later, MRF would sponsor Sharma’s bats too. “I couldn’t help but laugh when the MRF company contacted me asking me to put their MRF logo on my bat. I had tried to get a MRF bat all my life and now they wanted me to play with one.” Such are the tws of life. Now, he has broken a record of the man he had idolised all his life—the most hundreds an Indian in a World Cup.

It would be another four years after his first sighting of Tendulkar in flesh that he met him. Then Mumbai coach Chandrakant Pandit introduced the star-stuck youngster to Tendulkar at the Cricket Club of India (CCI) where he was playing a warm-up game against Australia. Soon, they were pitted as opponents in the Challenger series in Chennai, before they would soon play together in the few domestic games Tendulkar squeezed in. Soon, they would be India teammates too. Sharma would watch, awestruck, his hero completing his maiden ODI hundred in Australia in the first final of the VB series in 2007-08. And he would make his Test debut in Tendulkar’s farewell series.

Sharma would forever cherish those moments, as does Tendulkar’s simplicity. Their bond tightened and Tendulkar called Sharma in 2012 when the youngster was going through a lean patch. “He told me not to worry about my form. He told me that I was not the first cricketer to go through a bad patch. He went out of his way to get my Sri Lankan number and took the effort to call me. That speaks volumes about him as a person,” he recounted.
The fanboy has become an icon himself, he has broken a record of his too, he is the contemporary torchbearer of Mumbai school of batting, but Sharma might readily admit that he is still a Tendulkar fanboy.