Sachin Tendulkar may have inspired others to write poetry but he batted in robust prose. Not for him the tenderness and fragility of the poet, the excitement of a leaf fluttering in a gentle breeze. No. Tendulkar is about a plantation standing up to the typhoon, the skyscraper that stands tall, the cannon that booms. Solid. Robust. Focussed. The last word is the key. He loves the game deeply but without the eccentricities of the romantic. There is a match to be won at all times!

But Tendulkar too was a sapling once. And his brother Ajit sheltered him from the gale, kept him focussed. Sachin looked after his cricket, Ajit looked after Sachin. Twenty two years ago, I was asked by Sportsworld to do an article on this extraordinary schoolboy. It wasn’t Sachin I had to speak to, it was Ajit. When the time for the interview came, at Shivaji Park at Ramakant Achrekar’s net, Ajit was there with a cyclostyled copy of Sachin’s scores. And Achrekar admonished me for spoiling his child, for fear that Sachin will get distracted.

The interview was done, Sachin was neither overwhelmed nor garrulous, indeed he was so limited with his words that you had to hold on to every one of them, it was sent to Sportsworld in Calcutta by courier (or was it just put into a normal post box?) and then came a request for two photographs. Again it was Ajit who produced two. When I got the cheque, I noticed they had paid me an extra hundred rupees for the photographs. They weren’t mine but Sportsworld had a policy of paying for them and so I wrote out a cheque to Ajit for Rs. 100! It was acknowledged and accepted gratefully. We lived in different times then!

... contd.