Sachin Tendulkar told Ian Chappell, ‘Your brother took Indian cricket back five years’

Memorable episodes of Sachin Tendulkar’s storied career were played out at the ‘Unknown Sachin Tapes’ session at the Times Lit Fest on Saturday evening. Some of these were in Sachin’s own words, some shared by Boria Majumdar; the co-author of Sachin’s autobiography ‘Playing It My Way’.

The former Australian captain, Ian Chappell, had written that Tendulkar should have a look in the “mirror”.  This was during a particularly low point in Tendulkar’s career. After this, the two happened to face each other at a gym in Durban. Chappell saw Tendulkar working out and said, “So this is the secret.” Tendulkar was still angry and shot back, “You guys conveniently change your tone. Your brother (Greg Chappell, ex-India coach) created all the problem. He took Indian cricket at least five years behind.”

The tapes also reveal a deep dislike for Greg Chappell’s ways, but the best moments from the session were rare glimpses of Tendulkar’s humour as reported by The Times of India. Once, wheedled by the author why he reached out to wife Anjali and no other woman, Tendulkar simply said, “She was the only one I met. I was busy playing for India.

In a particularly candid segment, he talks about the pain of the tennis elbow injury. Sometimes he would chew painkillers instead of swallowing them, hoping that they would work better. Once the master batsman called up his wife Anjali from the hospital and told her, “Get a video camera. You have never seen me in so much pain.”

Cricket aside, the sessions also revealed what Tendulkar considers the high point of his life when a child suffering from cerebral palsy got up and played out three deliveries with his bat before relapsing into a vegetative state.