Saturday Dec 14, 2024
Saturday Dec 14, 2024
Monday, 25 April 2011 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
Even as birthdays roll by and the years keep adding, 38-turned on Saturday Sachin Tendulkar’s passion for cricket simply refuses to die down. Now that he’s won the World Cup for India, the genius is batting all the more like a dream much to joy of a billion people if not more.
Just the other day after an IPL game at the Wankhede, Sachin referred to roar of the home crowd as an “addiction” that keeps him going.
The rewards, however, wouldn’t have come had he not stretched the physical limits confounding his contemporaries as well as his fans alike. If he has ensured that he remained fit and firing even at 38 now, it’s a tribute to his strict fitness regimen.
Call it the desire to excel or his need to meet challenges, Sachin has defied age and injury at every stage of his career. Whenever injuries threatened to stall his career, he pushed his body to the limit, and sometimes even beyond. Even the most threatening of all his injuries - the painful tennis elbow (in 2004) - couldn’t break him. He cried out in agony, waited with hope for almost a year, tackled it with determination and ultimately conquered it like only he can.
All this may have helped Sachin to keep up with the rigours of Test, one-day and T20 cricket, but the quest for World Cup glory, and greater feats, required the maestro to raise the bar to a level that bordered on the surreal.
It was a huge challenge especially when there were more niggles than ever. A troublesome knee, a painful elbow, the creaking back and injured fingers held him back from wielding the heavy willow. But surely he wasn’t going to give up.
Like he didn’t despite splitting the webbing of his fingers while attempting a catch during the IPL semis last year. He played the summit clash against Chennai Super Kings with a heavily bandaged hand.
With him being a part of the Test team that reached the No. 1 ranking, there was just one more thing to achieve. To help India win the World Cup. To achieve that, he left no stone unturned. His personal gym was enhanced to cut out the trips to a nearby hotel for the morning sessions. That allowed him time for more training. He used that extra time to work out on the Swiss Ball to strengthen his lower abdominal muscles.
Tendulkar’s dietary habits too underwent a sea change. For someone who is a foodie, his meals had whittled down to just two things - boiled chicken and soup. There were constant consultations with India team’s trainer to ensure that his training schedules and diet were in sync with what the trainer had planned.
Time constraints were overcome by planning everything to the T. For instance, most calls to the trainer were made while exercising the legs under water at the MIG Club pool, and the elastic bands and other contraptions for strengthening the wrists were constantly in use except while dining. Even as he was putting himself through the grind, the outside world knew little about it. For them Sachin looked as normal as ever. Right from joking about the streaks of grey in his beard or the odd banter while practising with water-dipped rubber balls in the afternoons at the Mumbai Cricket Association’s Bandra-Kurla Complex ground, nothing had changed. (ET)
