Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Understanding GOD, by Sanjay Manjrekar

Let me tell you about the time around the 1996 world cup when India boasted of a batting line up having Navjot Sidhu, Mohammad Azharudin, Ajay Jadeja, Sanjay Manjrekar, Manoj Prabhakar and Vinod Kambli. However, this was a period in Sachin's career when the hopes of the entire nation rose and fell with his innings. Opposition teams could afford to forget about other batsmen and just divert their efforts on getting Sachin's wicket. India was called the one man army for a period of about 3-4 years. It was undoubtedly the peak of his batting and his rise to godliness started somewhere around that time.

In an interview with Ten Sports Manjrekar gives first hand experience of the class of Sachin Tendulkar.
"It was the Sri Lanka match and I was really having trouble against the away going delivery of Vaas. Sachin came up to me and told me to just stick around and be patient. I was really not able to accelerate and we had to make use of the fielding restrictions because Lankans had an explosive batting order. So I just asked him what should I do. He said just go on the back foot and punch the ball over the short extra cover fielder. The next over I tried and hit the ball for a four and a six over cover. I was amazed not at my own skill but at his ability to tell me what to do and how to do. I could not even imagine that you could play that shot against such bowling."

The sheer ability and audacity to tell a senior batsmen to play some extravagant shot which he hasnt even thought of explains the difference between GOD and mere mortals. This was a time when scorecards looked something like this:



2 comments:

  1. hey nits,
    this work of yours is a real great effort by you to give accounts from GOD's life. but i doubt whether you would be able to come up with any account not heard before by people like me or Ramdas. so you have a real tough challenge of suprising us with a never heard before account of GOD's life. i hope you rise upto this challenge and make my day :)

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  2. This effort is not at all targeted at Sachinists like you dude. Mainly because people like you would never accept that you have read this or any of the next pieces for the first time.

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