Foodie who avoided ducks

The always politically correct Sachin Tendulkar may have stirred a hornet’s nest in his brave stand against the Chappell brothers in his autobiography, but it was Anjali Tendulkar who stole the show at the launch of her hubby’s Play It My Way. Admitting freely that she had chased the magnetic 17-year-old teenage cricket prodigy, she recalled with exquisite humour on how her shy boyfriend forced her to go and break the news of their engagement to his conservative and very orthodox Marathi family.
Recounting how her shy friend would not even look at her as he made his exit from the airport on a designed day, Anjali spoke in detail at the book launch on how he made her pose as a journalist to come to his house for the first time even as curious to be sisters-in-law seemed to see through the ruse. Never having looked her in the eye previously Sachin had remembered the orange T-shirt she was wearing as she chased him. At least five years the master batsman’s senior, the medico was to forge one of the best partnerships of the prolific batsman’s life, bringing in the quintessential Indian woman’s stability to their and their children’s lives.
If his wife was the all-India heroine who did all the hard work of tending to family, the little master himself stood exposed as the biggest foodie in the business of sport. His mentor Sunil Gavaskar recalled with relish how he eyed the last piece of luscious prawn in a dish he was sharing with the prodigy only to relinquish his right so that a growing youngster could generate more energy into a cricketing life. Himself a gourmet more than a gourmand, the original little master shared more such delectable details of a young champion who went on to become the most prolific batsman in history.
The food tales didn’t stop there. His elder brother and cricket soul mate who did more for a career with his vision and eye for detail than the little boy with the heavy bat and an unusual technique — Ajit Tendulkar — told the story of how he stopped his brother from eating duck one day. He had read somewhere that three Lancashire batsmen who had dined on duck the night before a match had all failed to trouble the scorer the next day, Ajit simply refused to countenance his brother ordering the dish during a match.
Wait, the food tales don’t stop there either for the batsman with the most determined focus on the game. While going through a rough patch in his career during the tour of Australia in the early part of the millennium, Sachin and his close pal Ajit Agarkar had gone to a restaurant in Sydney and ordered some delicious Malaysian food. Having come out unbeaten on 64 or so on the next day, the batsman and his confidant decided not to change anything lest the luck be lost again. And since Sachin was not out the next evening too when well past a century, the pair ordered the same food again that night.
Having scored 241 not out to prove to himself and the world he was not a spent force yet, Sachin decided to return again to the same restaurant with Agarkar, who became known as Bombay Duck after having tasted much of it on the cricket field on a earlier tour Down Under. The waiter, a somewhat smart Aussie, asked — “The same again?” That ends the tale of two innings at the Sydney Cricket Ground in which Sachin remained unbeaten and India came away for the drawn series unscathed. And Ajit had played a role too in the resurrection asking his brother to forego the cover drive in order to make the one big score to leave a lean patch well behind.
The uplifting tales of Sachin’s youth are a nice adjunct to the book that recaptures every detail of his near 25-year career in the international game. Some of it may recall the banal details of an extraordinary career, but the book is thought to be a path breaking one from an Indian cricketer and an iconic one at that. Sourav Ganguly described in great detail of a young Tendulkar’s somnambulant ways that kept him awake. The story of how the pair turned up at the MRF Pace Foundation to try their hand at becoming fast bowlers brought much merriment too. Imagine an Indian pace attack led by the pair, Someone said cheekily enough.
Sachin’s cricket tales and his tributes to his family are all in the book. So too the rollercoaster story of Indian cricket in one of its most productive phases. The Chappell brothers may resemble the sole ducks in a shooting gallery and yet the narrative is a moving one of a young man with a dream and his phenomenal achievements in the game. After a start like the one in a well thought out unveiling, the Indian book that had an international launch is assured of success, much like the success story of the author himself.