Excellence is not an extraordinary act but a habit. You are what you do repeatedly over the years.’
That is Sachin in a nutshell. Doing it for 24 years was no mean task by any sporting standard, and that too with a zen mind on a spartan body — the most lethal combination in professional sport.
Sachin’s ‘veni, vidi, vici’ was not on a real battlefield but on cricketing fields, against difficult and fierce oppositions for more than two decades.
‘Here I am, rock you like a hurricane’ — the famous Scorpions song would have been an apt beginning number when Sachin entered the ground.
The man practised what he preached, rather than sit outside and sermonise. Whether it was a win or a loss, he carried himself with pride — that’s the true mark of sportsmanship. He went on with his job quietly without much ado, unlike current social media insanity.
The path created by Sachin was a paradigm shift in the world of cricket for years to come, with all current players and management enjoying the fruit of it from an economic point of view apart from cricketing parlance.
Sachin is a superb case study for any sports professional on what, where, when, why and how to manage one’s body and mind for peak performance through multiple years. He was a man miracle from a sports fitness and scientific point of view (not just an empty superlative for the occasion).
From the physical point of view, I can, with confidence, narrate some instances to which I was privy to for many years:
Symbol of defiance
He was told not to use a heavy bat to prevent lower back issues. Hence he worked on his posture and dynamic stability, while continuing to use heavy bats with highly-specialised protocols that suited only him. In the end, he had the last laugh, as he defied sports scientists and self-proclaimed experts in the strength and conditioning field. There are many more such instances where he defied logic to execute a task magnificently with mind-blowing mind and muscle connect.
Sachin and Robin Singh go through their sprints under the watchful eyes of Australian physio, Andrew Kokinos, during a training session at the M. A. Chidambaram stadium, Chennai, in 1998. | Photo Credit: The Hindu Photo Library
Reinvention mode
Being a professional player for 24 years is no joke, regardless of the sport. Despite having limited facilities and staff available during his early playing years, he harnessed his potential to the maximum in order to become the best of the best. He understood the role of each support staff in the team very well and what to expect from them professionally. He also designed his own ankle-toe support guard and taping technique in accordance with his foot mechanics, be it for batting or bowling.
Roger Bannister, the late English neurologist and athlete who was the first to run a mile under four minutes, once said — “Doctors and scientists said that breaking the four-minute mile was impossible; that one would die in the attempt. Thus, when I got up from the track after collapsing at the finish line, I figured I was dead.”
This quote would be very pertinent to Sachin, having defied many professionals and pundits in sports science by reinventing himself at every stage of his injury or slump in form and coming out with flying colours as a one-in-a-billion player.
Having seen him from close quarters during varied occasions and situations connected to the game, skill, fitness, diet or injuries, for many years, I have seen his instinctive ability to think out of the box and execute certain parameters seamlessly.
It gives me goosebumps to think about how this man can sync his mind and body at will and execute an insane task with a song on his lips.
Limitless hope
During a fitness test held in a training camp in Chennai way back in 2000, I was assisting in testing the team before a tour. During the sit-and-reach test for flexibility, Sachin scored low. He was flummoxed about the result and requested for five more minutes to warm up sufficiently and redo the test. I agreed and bang on after five minutes, he redid the test and scored the massive distance he had suggested he would cover.
I was left speechless with his accuracy and ability to do what he wanted. This was the first time I saw what he could do at will, if he puts his mind to it. He understood his body at every stage and became the most ‘adaptable athlete’ in the world of cricket. There are many more instances like this, be it our strength sessions, games or running sessions, about which I can go on and on like a spool deck.
The real beauty of Sachin lies in his humility and the ability to listen and take genuine opinions that he tries to implement without doubting the motive behind them. He is an astonishing sportsman, who can separate fact from fiction like a swan and not pretend to know the answer for all.
For me, my era of cricket can be split into two phases — AST (After Sachin Tendulkar) & BST (Before Sachin Tendulkar). He is the jedi of world cricket who wielded his bat like a lightsaber and brought happiness to billions around the world.
He is the eternal ‘God of Cricket’!
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