Indian Express Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta met Sachin Tendulkar, at first light in Mumbai’s Shivaji Park, for a freewheeling interview for NDTV 24X7. Excerpts:

This really is a cradle of so much talent, isn’t it? Shivaji Park.

Yeah, I mean, if you see, a lot of ex-cricketers stay around this park and this is the heart of Mumbai cricket. I grew up right here…myself, Vinod Kambli, Praveen Amre, Lalchand Rajput, all the India players played right here.

Yes, and I find it difficult to imagine that on these surfaces, we used to play without helmets. As you know, now, things have changed completely.

Doesn’t look quite like the kind of pitches you get these days…

I would think twice now laughs. After having played on better tracks, this looks a little dicey. But at that age, you just want to go out and hit the ball as hard as possible, and spend as many hours as possible on the ground so…

And once you are brought up on these, you could handle anything, I suppose. Right, but tell me a bit more about those days. What was it like to train with… you were very young when you were training and you were playing for India short of 17.

When I started playing here, I mean, I was only 11 or 12, and my brother brought me here, he said, ‘Ok, enough of being naughty in our building and all that’… I used to climb trees, and also fell occasionally … but when I came here, my coach kind of said, ‘No, you still need about six-eight months, come later on’. But my brother had seen me earlier, in our apartments when we used to play downstairs with a tennis ball. And he had seen maybe a spark in me or whatever. But he convinced my coach to give me another opportunity. He knew my coach because he grew up right across there…So I got another opportunity, my brother said, ‘He is really tense right now, you have a look at him tomorrow but don’t stand behind the nets, maybe from a distance’.

Your first trial, you didn’t do so well, is it?

I didn’t. My coach had clearly told my brother that he is too young right now and we need to give him another six months.

Did you use a full-size bat or a small bat then?

I used a full-size bat because I had no option. I had to share a bat with my brother, and it was a full-size bat. So I had no option, that’s how I got used to playing with heavier bats.

We all talk about sibling rivalries, we talk about brothers and sisters competing… in your case, your brother seems to be a parent-like figure in your life, isn’t it?

Yeah, in my case it was totally different. My brother kind of shielded me from all the pressures in life. He said, ‘all you got to do in life is focus only cricket and nothing else. Everything else will be taken care of. And even today, if something needs to be discussed and talked over, my brother would say, ‘Ok fine, leave that to us’ and all the family members would discuss together and take a decision and my focus still stays on cricket. I am 33 today, so I think I can participate in certain discussions but my brother doesn’t think so laughs. He feels it should only be cricket and nothing else.

Yeah, you decide what shot to play.

Yes laughs, but that really helped because focus is such an important factor in life…because of all these things, I am able to focus on my game. I have reached this stage of my life only because of him. How many brothers would sacrifice their own careers for the younger brother, which is what happened in my case.

But you were, I believe, named after a famous music director Sachin Dev Burman, your father’s favourite.

Yes, my brothers’ actually, they love music and Sachin Dev Burman was obviously one of their favourites. They thought maybe I will become a musician.

It was the heyday of SD Burman. Aradhana to Amar Prem, a whole lot of movies with great music by him had come out around that time.

Yeah, father used to enjoy music a lot. It rubs on us, as I said earlier. And I guess, whatever your father does… he is your hero in life, and you want to be like your father.

Sachin, now tell us about you and Vinod, the great partnership, 664…

I think it was in 1985-86 when I met Vinod. Right here. And we literally clicked.

How did you meet him the first time… Vinod Kambli and you?

At that time, I wasn’t playing for Shardashram… Vinod was in another school. We were practising right here and got to know each other. After that, it really clicked because I joined Shardashram, so did Vinod. We were in the same class. Though there was a big group there, a good 20-25 boys who enjoyed each other’s company…with Vinod, the friendship clicked because he used to come home for lunch, or we used to go and have vada-paav, bhel, then that kind of reflected also on the field. Occasionally, we never used to call while taking a run. I would just look at his eye and I would know whether it was yes or no. The opposition found it quite tough to manage and that partnership was wonderful, 664. It was at Azad Maidan, and we batted first and I went in to bat just before lunch. And Vinod was already batting at 40-45, when I joined him. We had a great time, we were like singing songs between overs. Our school had such a strong team, we would thrash everyone and we would kind of decide, ‘okay, we need 100 runs, we are going to finish the next 100 runs in the next 30 overs’. We knew tonight we will get around 20 overs and the next morning we will get around 10 overs. So that we could bunk school.

The entire school team would go for a movie or go to the beach and play there. It was a lot of fun, school days…

But I believe in that partnership, you also ignored your coach and captain, who wanted to declare.

No, I didn’t ignore my coach… we both started showing our backs to the assistant, who couldn’t cross the boundary line. He had to stay outside the boundary line and say that ‘You know, your coach has said you have to declare now, there is no point carrying on like this’. But we were enjoying so much that we said, ‘ok, fine, we are not going to pay much attention to him. We will show our backs to him and pretend we didn’t hear it at all’. But at lunch time, the first thing he told me was, ‘you are going to get a serious hiding now, you have to now call Ramakant Achrekar sir’. And that’s when I really got scared…

Serious hiding for a world record at that age…

Well, none of us knew about the record. We just played. Played for about a day and a half. And at lunch time, when I went and called my sir, he said, ‘What is their score?’ because he thought we had declared. So I said ‘sir, we are sorry, but we are still batting’. He said, ‘you can’t be doing this, because if you want to score more runs it should be in the other game… This game is already over’. We had scored something like 535-540 runs by that time, and then we scored some 600 later on, but he said, ‘Now the game is over. You let the opposition try to score 500 runs…anyways, you don’t deserve to win.

You and Vinod were also quite a pair. You were very similar in some ways, but you were also very different…One left-handed, one right-handed. A little factoid: the right-hander could throw with his left hand; the right-hander writes with the left hand, the left-hander wrote with the right .

Yes. We were totally different personalities.

You are ambidextrous, you can use both hands.

Yes, so is Vinod. But we were totally different in nature to each other. Vinod was an outgoing person, enjoyed going out…

Very flamboyant.

I was happy being in my room… put on some music, watch television. It was wonderful, Vinod would always be up to some mischief, and I used to be a loyal spectator… all the time, giving positive responses. It was wonderful, we used to joke around and… Vinod is an extremely funny character, I mean, but he’s got a big heart. If you know him, you really know what to expect from him. But for a stranger it seems this guy is not serious in life, you may ask what is wrong with him. But if you know him, he was extremely serious when it came to cricket. The moment he crossed the boundary line and he was out in the middle, he used to forget about all his mischief and just focus on cricket.

Which is why it’s sad the partnership did not last longer, I mean, the promise of that one series against England.

Yeah, I feel quite sad about that because he was such an immensely talented player. It was rather unfortunate, certain problems in his life, injuries at the wrong time… didn’t really help him. I felt in 1998, he was back on track, his fitness was good, he had started batting well but unfortunately… he wasn’t even playing that game, and he broke his ankle. He had come into field just for two or three overs, and he broke his ankle which kept him out for almost six-eight months.

For many of us, a great memory… not a happy memory… but a great memory of him is that World Cup 1996 match, which was abandoned in Kolkata against Sri Lanka when he came back with tears on his cheeks. Very emotional moment.

We all cried that day in the dressing room, Vinod was one of them who happened to be there in the middle. It was rather unfortunate that the match had to be called off. That’s one moment I would like to forget… we were in terrific form, we were doing well…

And then the pitch broke.

Yeah, it crumbled. It looked a beautiful surface and we were kind of, maybe, misled by somebody over there who had told us that, you know, the track has been re-laid and we have imported soil from Australia. It looked very good, it looked firm. But as the match progressed, it started crumbling and it wasn’t a pleasant sight.

So was that one of the saddest moments in your playing life?

Yes, that was surely one of the saddest moments because we knew for sure that we had the capability and the ammunition to beat Sri Lanka in the semi-finals and make it to Pakistan, to Lahore for the final. The whole team was playing well. We were in great form, fielding well, batting well, bowling well. Everything was clicking and the momentum was with us. All of a sudden, it was over.

What was the toughest series for you so far?

I think that 1992 tour in South Africa was very tough. We didn’t expect the South Africans to come at us so strong. And we’d had a disastrous Australian tour before that, the standard of playing was very high in Australia and we played on some lively tracks. But in South Africa, we played a couple of side games and practice matches and we did really well. But one practice game, which was an eye-opener was against the President’s XI. We bowled first and got them out for 220 and we wanted to finish off the game. We said ‘let us go out and score big runs and beat them again’. And when they bowled a couple of overs, we realised this is completely different cricket…And from there on, it started and the tour was extremely tough, the standard of playing extremely high.

Which is the greatest team that you have played against?

The greatest team, without any doubt, is Australia.

Steve Waugh’s Australia? Which Steve Waugh team, the one you played in Australia or the one that came to India and you beat them 2001?

I think it will be a tough choice but I think the best side was when they came here. They had a terrific side, they had…

Tell me something about that series, something turned that series, something that turned Indian cricket. And that good momentum lasted some time. There was that Rahul-Laxman partnership. What happened? That was on great turnaround where you were not present on the ground.

I think it was fabulous, I have not seen anything like that. We were down and low in the second innings…

We were looking at an innings defeat.

Yeah, and everyone was sitting in the dressing room, few were watching the game outside. And, we took our spots and we said… we are all sometimes very superstitious… and we decided we are not going to move from those spots. The partnership started growing. We said ‘ok fine, now what’s going to happen next?’ Time went by and we started gradually climbing up the ladder and we started believing that this could be an interesting game because if we get 200 plus… at that stage, we were saying ‘ok, if we get even 150 plus we can have a go at them. But then we eventually ended up being in a solid position.

I remember that evening, Rahul and Laxman, both of them were totally exhausted. And the whole team was right next to them, you know, asking ‘what do you want, do you want water, this, that, Electral, glucose’, all those kind of things. The next day, we started planning that evening. ‘Ok fine, now we are in such a good position, we should go out and attack the next day and set them a target’. That was our best chance, a target which is beyond their reach, so they have to block to survive. And in the first session, nothing happened… and then All of a sudden, before tea, things started going in our favour.

You made a little contribution as well.

Yeah, I came and got three wickets. I thought those three wickets were quite important, Hayden, Gilchrist and Warne. And Warne, I got him out on a googly. To get the world’s best leg-spinner out, to sort him out on a googly was quite exciting. He caught me after the game and said, ‘oh, you caught me there’. It was a brilliant game, probably the best Test match of my life.

You played a great innings in Chennai… turning track.

Yeah, they batted first, got about 500.

And we got about 510.

Yeah, in the second innings we got them out early. Harbhajan, in that series, bowled exceptionally well. I have never seen an off-spinner bowl like that. With bounce, turn and the right speed. I mean, we had to have a backward short-leg because he was getting so much bounce and if they went for the sweep shot, it would catch the leading edge…

You played a great innings here, on a big turner against Shane Warne. And I remember, I think, Richie Benaud said for him, the great sight was Shane Warne for the first time coming round the wicket to a right-hander and you hitting the first one over mid-wicket for six.

I kind of practised in the nets. … L Sivaramakrishnan and we were practising together in Chennai and LS used to bowl to me in the nets and I had made that area on the leg-stump quite rough. Warne usually bowls round the wicket… Just wanted out to try out a few things and it worked really well. And even when I was practising with the Mumbai team, I used to make the left-arm spinners bowl in that rough area.

Did you anticipate Warne would use that tactic?

I knew. In Indian conditions, over the wicket was also getting very big turn but if the batsmen get going, just to break the momentum, he would come around the wicket and bowl there. Till then, I hadn’t faced a leg-spinner bowling round the wicket, into the rough. It was a new thing for everyone. And he had so much success that even if nothing happened for 5-6 overs, he would sometimes go round the wicket even on the first day. Even if there was not enough rough, he would just bowl there because the guys at the other end at the back of their minds knew if he comes around the wicket, it would turn big.

The other bowler who tried to use that leg-stump line with you was Ashley Giles, your only stumping dismissal in Test cricket.

Yeah, I thought there I kind of got a little carried away because at the other end… I was batting with Sehwag, and the seamers had bowled a wonderful spell, and basically that was the last Test match. Before, he had… in that entire series, he had bowled only over the wicket to me and I sort of said ‘Ok fine, if you are going to play around with my patience, I am going to play around with yours. Let’s see what happens’. I was absolutely in control but that particular match, Sehwag was, you know, playing a few big shots, I said ‘I am also going to try and play some big shots’. I think I was batting on 90. And I had started planning, I said, ‘let me hit one over extra cover and one over mid-on, and get close to 100, and you know, after that I am going to play some big shots. Because so far I have controlled everything. Whenever I wanted to block, I block and whenever I wanted to pick a single, I have done that. And it was a defensive line to bowl. I knew if I kept padding, I was never going to get out, but that was part of their strategy. Because they wanted to block one end.

To be concluded next week

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