Author: WebDesk



Sachin Paaji is special. Always will be. The greatest batsman to have played the game. But that’s not what defines him. He is a wonderful human being, and that’s what I will always say is his first quality. I fondly remember Sachin Paaji taking me out to dinner when I got my first Test century in Colombo. He had scored a double hundred in the same game and had taken me out to my first Japanese meal. It was an experience. Paaji was a foodie, and with him around, we learnt a lot about Japanese food. He came up…





I didn’t know of Mr Tendulkar in his first few innings. In those days, an actor by the same first name (no surname) was known to more people. For a billion of us, December 13, 1989, was destined to change that. A Waqar Younus bouncer felled a cherubic sixteen-year-old son of middle- class India. This was war. The Pakistanis roared just as our hearts sank. My mind, I must confess, even flirted with the horrible idea if this were the end-of-story, a re-enactment of Nari Contractor falling to Charlie Griffith. A few seconds later, the bonding of a lifetime was…





I have known Sachin at many levels. First, I played with him and against him while growing up in Mumbai and while aspiring to play for the state and the country. Second, we became friends over a period of time, and finally, Sachin is the brand ambassador of the company I work for as Chief Executive Officer. So it has been a relationship that goes back nearly 40 years. The first time I heard of Sachin was when he was 10–11. In fact, that was the first time I had seen him. It was before his exploits for Saradrashram…