Book review: Sachin Tendulkar - playing it safe

Sachin Tendulkar leaves a lot to the reader’s imagination in his autobiographical account

Anything associated with cricketing legend Sachin Tendulkar’s name is not just expected to be good, but great. His autobiography, Playing It My Way is no exception. The book gives the reader a glimpse into the hard work, discipline and sacrifices it took to make ‘Little Master’. It is also a testament to a man who handled his cult status with admirable dignity throughout his career.

But although Tendulkar’s reserved nature served him well throughout his cricketing career, it doesn’t make for a compelling autobiography. While the book gives plenty of insight into what it was like to be Sachin Tendulkar, the husband and athlete, it fails where it should have succeeded most easily: the subject of cricket itself. Often, Playing It My Way feels more like a statistics-heavy read on Indian cricket between 1989 and 2013, than an insight into the game from a great cricketer.

The book begins promisingly enough as Tendulkar pays tribute to his boyhood batting coach, whom he often lovingly refers to as ‘Sir’. Here, Pakistani readers will appreciate the Indian cricketing system, where genuine talent has a better chance of being discovered and nurtured from an early age. Soon he moves on to his first tour to Pakistan, where he tells us how legendary Pakistani cricket leg-spinner Abdul Qadir taunted him after he smashed rookie leg spinner Mustaq Ahmed’s over by asking him to take a chance on a more senior bowler. After Tendulkar gave Qadir the same treatment later in the innings, the veteran Pakistani cricketer paid the 16-year-old a compliment.

But Playing It My Way is woefully thin on such intimate moments. Perhaps Tendulkar should have read Imran Khan’s All Round View, which allowed the reader to get to know some of the greatest international cricketers from Khan’s era by sharing candid moments with them. Khan even reserved a chapter on the cricketers he thought were the best in the business. But if Sachin decided to remain quiet on international cricketers, at the very least he could have shared deeper thoughts on his relationship with his own teammates and the atmosphere in the Indian dressing room.

The most startling omission from the biography is his complete silence on the match-fixing issue. While it is true that he had no knowledge of the allegedly corrupt activities of his own captain, it is a pity that he doesn’t have an opinion on it either. In fact, the autobiography almost makes it seem as if Tendulkar had little opinion on the cricketing world overall.

The book also suffers from poor narrative pacing, where moments in the legendary cricketer’s life which should have been gut- wrenching for the reader end up having little emotional impact. Here too, inspiration could have been sought from tennis star Andre Aggasi’s book, Open, which is one of the greatest sports autobiographies ever written, and has found readers both inside and outside his fan base. On the other hand, aside from die-hard Sachin fans, Playing It My Way would be difficult to recommend to most readers.

Noman Ansari is a freelance writer and a regular contributor to The Express Tribune magazine. He tweets @Pugnate

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, January 4^th, 2015.