All calm,all quiet as Sachin Tendulkar waits to explode

Inside dressing room nothing has been planned as yet about how Mumbai will celebrate his farewell game.

Sachin Tendulkar arrived an hour before actual training time and was seen doing his fitness even before the few youngsters from the Mumbai team had made it to Wankhede Stadium. When his team-mates trooped in,they couldn’t help going down the memory lane,reliving the playing times of their most illustrious peer.

Wasim Jaffer,the senior-most of the lot,yet five years his junior,puts it nicely. “It’s like giving graduation lessons to a student of Class 5. They won’t have access to great thoughts,immediately. But those great inputs will help down the line and certainly be missed and we were the lucky ones to get it,” Jaffer said after Mumbai’s practice session.

The Mumbai opener is among a few veteran faces inside the dressing room apart from Zaheer Khan. Tendulkar has played with Sulakshan Kulkarni,who is Mumbai’s current coach. The 24-year-long journey is about to end soon. He was the first in for practice. The dedication is still hard to match, Kulkarni said.

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Inside the dressing room nothing has been planned as yet about how the team will celebrate his farewell game in Lahili with the Mumbai side. Jaffer said that everybody inside the dressing room knows that these are his last few days with the Mumbai side but nobody wants to say anything.

We know its his last domestic match,but nobody wants to say anything. Apart from Zaheer and I,our team is brimming with youngsters. Even Abhishek (Nayar) is relatively new. Nobody has the courage to talk to him about his retirement. But Im sure everybody is sad the whole cricketing world is sad. It is natural that one has to call it a day and Tendulkar chose his, Jaffer added.

The dressing room is different now. Jaffer has realised its time seniors accepted the changes themselves and tried to adjust to the new set of players who are coming in. Most youngsters aren’t coming from the typical traditional batsmanship of cricket where playing ground shots was the ultimate goal.

The whole set-up has changed. We were never taught to play such cricket. We played shots to the ground always, the opener said.

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Switching back to Tendulkar,Jaffer said post calling his retirement from international cricket,the burden is off from the master blaster. I think mentally he must have realised that it is time to go. So the burden is off him. Thats why he wants to enjoy the 15- 16 days of cricket left in him.

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