Book Review #46: Playing It My Way: My Autobiography By Sachin Tendulkar

Writing review to the well known facts is a bit overdoing the task!! But, let me tell you, I thoroughly enjoyed reading Paaji’s autobiography. With help of Boria Majumdar, Sachin has written excellently and given us a walkthrough of his life from the age of 11 till his retirement at the age of 41.

I don’t go over describing the events that unfolded in his life as a cricketer. We all know it better over the years by watching him play. What might be the takeaway from the book? Well, his determination. That’s all I can say. Having succumbed to hell lot of injuries, Sachin managed to play an illustrious career of 24 years. Started as a novice, ended as a Bharat Ratna!! Not an easy task to become the favorite of most of the Indians that loves cricket. Having born in the 80’s, he was my hero in my childhood and surprisingly my first bat that I was gifted by my dad had MRF sticker on it!!!

If we speak about the book, it speaks less about his childhood and more about his statistics. It has to be, doesn’t it? Started to play cricket at the age of 11 and within 5 years ended up in the national team is not an easy achievement. He never looked back from then on. He carried on with the same zeal in his entire career. Of course, there are some ups and downs, hiccups, disappointment, resentment, etc…but, nothing has stopped him going on.

He did mentioned some of the gray patches of his career and expressed his disappointments over few events that happened in his career as a player and as a member of team India. Particularly Greg Chapel being appointed as the coach of team India that made our team looks weaker than Bangladesh or even Kenya. He had openly criticized in his book about Greg and his cunning motives. On one occasion, where Greg meets Sachin in his house and asks him to take over the captainship from Rahul and even goes on telling him that, they both can rule the Indian team in the coming years. Having sensed all this, Sachin declined it out rightly and asked Greg to not bring this topic anymore. We will come to know many such stories of Greg and his “Hatke…” style of coaching India that resulted in damaging the team’s morale and spirit.

Sachin also mentions about few events where he wished things could’ve been little better. One such thing was Kapil Dev being appointed as the team’s coach that made no sense to him!! In one of the particular test match where he was not out on 194 short of 6 runs to his double hundred, that’s when Rahul had declared our innings!! This decision of Rahul had made Sachin furious for few days and even he stopped talking to Rahul for few days!! When Rahul tried to explain to him that, “It’s in the interest of team” Sachin was reluctant to listen to him and instead he made his point clear that “You could’ve have waited for 6 more runs”!!

He goes on explaining each and every tour he had made in his carrier and expressed his wish of becoming the world champion. Remember, Sachin has played in 5 world cup events since 1992 and couldn’t able to be on the triumphant side. He had to wait for his 6^th world cup to witness this moment. Anyways, he had written in great care about all these events.

He carefully dodged few things regarding his captaincy, match fixing scandals, IPL spot fixing. He managed to brush few lines on these events. That’s expected according to me. He even avoided why his friendship with Vinod Kambli had taken turns in the years down the lane. He just managed to write few lines about his and signed it off saying; he is still friends with him.

He has written that he was super agitated when it came to his 100^th international 100. This one particular hundred took almost a year and half to come into the fore. As a fan, I was disappointed that it came against Bangladesh!! :)

Enough said about his autobiography. It is certainly a must read book. Even though you are not a fan of Sachin (Duh!!), you will certainly witness few funny, sad, heated epic moments from his life as a Sachin – A Good Student of Cricket, Sachin - The Cricketer, Sachin – The Foodie, Sachin – The Shy Guy, Sachin – The Patriot, Sachin – The Proud Father, Sachin – A Responsible Son, Sachin – The Friendly Guy, Sachin – The Well Behaved Gentleman, Sachin – A Philanthropist and finally Sachin – The Epitome of Indian Cricket.

Overall a fantastic journey I must say. I was so engrossed while reading it; I finished reading it in flat 2 days :). There are nice photographs from his childhood, his trips, his marriage, etc… At the end of the book, you can see his complete career statistics, his runs, his hundreds, against which team, home and away runs etc…

Towards the end of the book, you can read his last speech that he gave at wankhede stadium thanking every single person that played a crucial role in building up his career, starting with his family members, his wife Anjali, importantly his childhood coach Ramakant Achrekar, his best friends, his significant others in the team like Sourav, Rahul, Laxman etc...He finished his book in style thanking his fans for all the support that they have given him in his career and mentioned that he will never forget the “SACHIN… SACHIN…” chant of his fans till his last breath!

My Rating:

5/5

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