The first time I saw Sachin was in Kanpur where he had come to play for West Zone in the Vijay Hazare tournament. Obviously, there was huge attention on him as they were touting him to be the next big thing in Indian cricket.
I had not seen him before, but the knock he played against us, gave ample proof that if he had his head in right place, he would dominate international cricket.
He was using an Ihsan bat, which easily could have been a bench press rod for fitness work because of its heavy weight.
It amazed all of us that the man of a short stature could pick up such a heavy bat and still manouvre it. Obiovusly, in future he continued using a heavy bat and still had so much time to play genuine fast bowling.
We went on to be a part of under-17 camp under the great Vasu Paranjpe in Indore and what amazed us how much he loved batting in the nets, for hour after hour.
With time, over the years, by sharing the same dressing room, going through the highs and lows of Indian cricket, he has become a very good friend.
He is still as humble and soft spoken as he used to be and so keen and childish in narrating his childhood stories to the team-mates – whether batting for 54 days in a row in different matches when he was 14 years old and the way his coach Mr Ramakant Achrekar used to take him on his scooter around the maidans (grounds) of Mumbai.
I see no reason to say that he transformed into one of the best batsman of the modern era with hard work. His technique is so simple, yet so solid. What has stood up in his success story is his ability to adjust and change his game according to the situation. At times, I have seen him in Test matches do completely different things in the middle of an innings and asked him a few times that how could he do it straight in a game without even doing it in the nets? That’s why probably he is such a great player.
After being around for 18 years, his hunger for the game has not reduced at all and every time I see him walking out to play Test match as if he is play his first game.
I have been fortunate enough to witness some of his best Test and one-day knocks.
To my mind his best Test innings is the hundred he scored at Perth in 1992 during the tour of Australia 18 years ago.
His best one-day inning innings would be the hundred against Australia at Sharjah and also the innings of 97 against Pakistan at Centurion in the 2003 World Cup.
He has never been a fitness fanatic in an era where training is such an important criteria.
He never believed in all these and would always be spending his energy and time in harnessing his cricket skills rather than lapse around the park. He considers bowling in the nets is the way to keep him fit and that also is one of the reasons he has survived 18 years. In recent times, obviously, his body has broken down a few times, but I still feel he has got good two to three years of international cricket left in him. For the good of Indian cricket, we all hope that he continues to fire as long as he plays.
To us, he will not just be remembered as a great player and lovely human being, but also as somebody who has been trying to learn Bengali for the last fourteen years: unfortuntaley, he has never managed to do that.
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