Sachin: the Story of the World's Greatest Batsman

436 Pages·2010·6.48 MB·English

by  Gulu Ezekiel

SACHIN
THE STORY OF THE WORLD'S GREATEST BATSMAN
Gulu Ezekiel
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi 110 017, India
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England
First published by Penguin Books India 2002
This revised edition published by Penguin Books 2010
Copyright© Gulu Ezekiel 2002, 2010
All rights reserved
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3
Page x is an extension of the copyright page
While every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and obtain permission, this has not
been possible in all cases; any omissions brought to our attention will be remedied in future
editions.
ISBN 9780143066903
Typeset in Aldine 401 by Mantra Virtual Services Pvt Ltd
Printed at Anubha printers, Noida
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior written consent in any
form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition
including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser and without lim,;mg the
rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both
the copyright owner and the above-mentioned publisher of this book.
To my mother Mrs Khorshed W Ezekiel
and
my father late Prifessor Joe Ezekiel

Contents
Preface to the Revised Edition ix
Copyright Acknowledgements X
Acknowled~nts xi
Prologue: The God oflndian Cricket
Bombay Boy 4
Schoolboy Prodigy 13
World Record 24
A Boy Among Men z;)
Into the Cauldron ofTest Cricket 42
12 Runs Short of Glory 53
Hail the Boy King 56
Home, Sweet Home 61
On Top Down Under 77
World Cup Debut fS7
Two Little Bits of Cricket History 94
Success at Home and Abroad 102
The Great Friendship 109
The One-day Phenom 116
The Brian and Sachin Show 126
World Cup 1996---and England Again 138
Captaincy-! 149
Defeat and Despair 155
Confrontation 168
Musical Chairs 181
Desert Storm 200
TheDonandl 'lfJ7
On Top of the World 213
Trauma 221
Tragedy and Tears Z29
Reluctant Messiah 238
Double-Then Trouble 245
Debacle Down Under 250
Stepping Down 259
Match-fixing and the CBI 268
'The Greatest Series Ever' 278
Foot Fault 286
Year of Controversies m
Global Brand 311
Man and Myth 318
Foreign Travails 323
The World Cup 328
The Burden Eases 331
Year of Contrasts 334
Sunny Eclipsed 337
World Cup Woes 347
Drama Down Under and the IPL 354
Back on Top 365
Such a LongJourney 372
Sachin Tendulkar in Figures TTl
by Mohandas Menon
Select Bibliography 394
Index 396
Preface to the Revised Edition
An enormous amount of international cricket has been played around
the world since the first release of this book seven and a half years
back. This has meant the addition of nine chapters to this updated
edition while the Epilogue from the original release has been removed
since it is no longer relevant. In addition I have added a paragraph or
two to a couple of the original chapters to bring them up to date.
The volume of cricket Tendulkar has played in the interim and
the spread and easy accessibility of the Internet means the statistical
section has been drastically reduced.
When the book first came out in mid-2002, Tendulkar had played
91 Test matches and 286 One-day Internationals. By the end of2009
those figures read 162 Test matches and 440 ODis (plus a solitary
Twenty20 International).
Tendulkar completed 20 years of international cricket in
November 2009 and after all these years he still remains the world's
greatest batsman.
The name of the book thus remains the same-a tribute to the
subject's genius-but much of the story has evolved.
This new, revised edition seeks to bring it up to date.
New Delhi Gulu Ezekiel
December 2009
Copyright Acknowledgements
My publishers and I would like to acknowledge the following periodicals,
newspapers and websites for permission to reprint copyright material:
Sportstar, Sportsworld, Sportsweek, Cricket Talk, Outlook, Time, The Week, The
Hindu, The Hindustan Times, Mid Day, The Telegraph, TI1e Daily Telegraph, The
Age, The Weekend Australian, PTI, The Times if India, Wisden Cricket Monthly,
Wtsden.com, The Wisden Cricketer, Wisden Cricketer's Almanack (extracts are
reproduced by kind permission of john Wisden & Co. Ltd.), The Cricketer
Intemational, indya.com, Cricketnext.com and Rediff.com.
Grateful acknowledgement is also made to the following for
permission to extract copyright material: Extracts from Bradman's Best by
Roland Perry, published by Bantam Press. Used by permission of
Transworld Publishers, a division of The Random House Group Limited;
from Gavaskar and Tendulkar: Shaping Indian Cricket's Destiny by Sandeep
Bamzai. Used by permission of Jaico Publishing House; from An
Ar1thropologist Among Marxists and Other Essays by Ramachandra Guha,
published by Permanent Black and An Indian Cricket Omnibus, edited by
Ramachandra Guha and T.G.Vaidyanathan, published by Oxford
University Press. Used by permission of Ramachandra Guha; from Lord
Harris Shield Cricket Tournament: Commemoration Volume, 1897-1997 and Indian
Cricket: The Captains-From Nayudu to Tendulkar by Partab Ramchand. Used
by permission of Marine Sports International Publishing Division; from
Not Quite Cricket by Pradeep Magazine. Used by permission of Penguin
Books India and Pradeep Magazine; and from.Azhar:TheAuthorized Biography
ofM ohammad Azharuddin by Harsha Bhogle. Used by permission of Penguin
Books India and Harsha Bhogle.
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