How Sachin Destroyed My Life: but gave me an All Access Pass to the world of Cricket Read online

  Vikram Sathaye

  Foreword

  by Sachin Tendulkar

  I had heard of Vikram’s cricket stand-up acts through common friends but I actually got to see him perform only in 2006 in Sri Lanka during the Asia Cup. Since then I have seen him perform at various cricket functions and have loved his observations on the lighter side of the game along with his true to life impersonations of so many cricketers across the world.

  What also comes across from his humourous perspective on the game is the fact that he is a genuine cricket fan and is quite knowledgeable about the game as well. You will discover when you read certain chapters where he interprets the various skills and insights many good cricketers possess. While doing this he is also able to define the characteristics and personalities of the players and people he has interviewed in his own humourous style.

  Cricket is more than the players we see on the field. There is a world outside the ground which includes the support staff, media, commentators, touring parties and Vikram has covered those aspects beautifully through many interesting anecdotes. I am sure the reader will really enjoy his theories and his take on this wonderful game of cricket.

  I would like to wish my dear friend Vikram success on his journey and request him to keep making us and the world laugh in the years to come.

  Sachin Tendulkar

  P.S. Vikram I may have destroyed your initial life but you recovered pretty well after the follow on.

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  Foreword by Sachin Tendulkar

  Acknowledgements

  1. How Sachin Destroyed My Life

  2. The Master Speaks

  3. My Way Is The Highway - The Sehwag Theory

  4. In The Zone With Rahul Dravid

  5. Yuvraj’s Got Talent

  6. A Spinner Can Also Be A Cassanova

  7. A Nation Of Speed Breakers

  8. The Commentator Species

  9. The Broadcasting Doctrine

  10. I Got An Exclusive

  11. The Sports Journalist’s Checklist

  12. Fine Tuning The Indian Team

  13. Getting The Figures Right

  14. Touring Around The World

  15. Sledging

  16. The DNA Of The Indian Fan

  17. The IPL Circus

  18. Are Women Responsible For The Sporting State Of Our Country?

  19. The Stand-Up Experiences

  1

  How Sachin Destroyed My Life

  “You are useless…irresponsible! See how at your age, Sachin Tendulkar is playing for India! Look at his maturity and look at you! I am just fed up with this boy…”

  This was the typical rant of every middle-class mother in the late 80s. Before Sachin Tendulkar made his debut at the age of 16 in 1989, everything was fine. We went to school, behaved like irresponsible teenagers, achievement was something to be tackled later. You could even score 30 not out in 50 overs and no one would say anything - life as we knew it, was great. However, after Sachin’s debut, things completely changed. All of a sudden we had a benchmark in our lives.

  Gandhiji, Nehruji, Vikram Sarabhai and Kishore Kumar probably didn’t do anything significant when they were 16 so my parents’ generation lived a great life. It was OK to gain maturity at 40 because that was the age Gandhiji returned from South Africa. Our lives, on the other hand, had become miserable because of this one boy Sachin Tendulkar!

  My mother used Sachin’s name to drive home her point almost on a daily basis, whether it was completing my homework or polishing my shoes. It was a great victory for her as she knew that a cricketing reference would hit me deep in the gut and let me know she meant business.

  She was a quick learner and realised that benchmarking me against a 16-year-old Chemistry genius would have had no impact on me. It was a peculiar situation for me because I played a bit of domestic cricket around the same time Sachin did and was completely besotted by his genius. However, I also started hating him as he was beginning to damage my self-esteem. The genius of a young Sachin Tendulkar made my entire generation of wannabe cricketers in the 80s look like genetic garbage.

  India is a peculiar country when it comes to cricket. Every person you meet claims to have played cricket for his school, college or at least his co-operative housing society at some stage in his life. How the entire Indian male population fitted in a school cricket team is something we will never understand, but that’s what we are made to believe. The Indian male believes that by claiming to have played cricket for his school it will improve his image in the mind of the listener.

  I also played cricket for both my school and college in Pune and while Sachin was trying to impress selectors for a spot in the Mumbai Ranji Trophy team I was trying to convince my parents to at least buy me a new cricket bat.

  Middle class parents in the 80s tried to justify their miserliness by saying philosophical things like, “the bat is not important, it’s the mind that matters, so first score the runs and then you will get the bat”, which basically meant ‘tough luck’! Years later when I brought up this topic with my mother, she shut me up by pointing out that even Lance Armstrong was on record that “It’s not about the bike.”

  I remember that day distinctly, February 24, 1988, the day I took my decayed furniture of a cricket bat and went to play an under-15 cricket trial match where I scored 74 runs. I was ecstatic. However, as fate would have it that was the same day Sachin scored 326 in a school cricket game in Mumbai. My father didn’t even congratulate me because of this. I don’t blame him, my 74 in comparison with Sachin’s 326 looked like Maninder Singh’s batting contribution to Indian cricket. Sachin was destroying me slowly but steadily. Inspite of my awe for him, my hate quotient started increasing exponentially every day. He was robbing me of my glory with every passing day.

  I once had the opportunity to play against him but ended up as the 12th man. I was watching him bat along with a teammate from the dressing room. He had made an unbeaten 70 which comprised some stellar on-the-rise shots. Everytime he hit one over the bowler’s head we looked at each other and acknowledged our feeling of inadequacy. A feeling similar to what Abhishek Bachchan must be having everytime he sees his dad’s scenes from Deewar.

  After watching one such Sachin shot, which I couldn’t have even imagined hitting in my dreams, I came to terms with the fact that I was better off pursuing middle-class India’s dream of completing graduation followed by an MBA. The shot he played was a slash over the slip cordon for a ball that was of chest height. For a young cricketer like me at that age, who even tried to hit full tosses in the V region because that was the correct thing to do this shot was like watching Basic Instinct with your parents — Pure Scandal! I mentally quit cricket that day because I realised I could never play shots like these. The demoralisation was now almost complete.

  The one thing I thank Sachin for is that because of him, I at least realised very early in life that this is not a sport one should consider as a career option. While we were discussing how to keep the square cut low by closing the blade of the bat he was playing inside out shots over the cover point region.

  Years passed in the realm of mediocrity. As a typical student in the 90s, on finishing my graduation with a BSc in Geology (yes there is a subject like that) I enrolled for an MBA in Marketing. Strangely, instead of trying to focus on Kotler and Buffet my mind was still focussed on Greenidge and Haynes. Hours were spent trying to justify to friends how Sachin Tendulkar and Vinod Kambli got the right brea
ks and how I didn’t get the encouragement at the right age. My focus had now shifted to discussing the game with my colleagues. One-upmanship on the basis of who knew the statistics to Sachin’s 100s and his exploits was a regular pastime including endless arguments on whether he was the greatest ever. Some of my colleagues had made it a habit of taking an anti-Sachin stand based on his 2nd innings average. These people were important in their own way in society because if not for them, conversations on cricket would not have lasted more than 30 seconds. Even after quitting the game, I was still discussing Sachin. He was sub-consciously haunting me everywhere.

  Despite my mental disintegration, I somehow still held on to the notion that I had a career in sports. So when I got my first job offer after completing my MBA with the Professional Management Group – a sports marketing company, I found some solace.

  My first salary was Rs 8,000 and I was quite happy with it. However my joy was shortlived and I didn’t share it with anyone because it was also the same day that Sachin signed his multi-crore deal with World Tel. There was absolutely no way I was going to let anyone know my salary. Sachin had slowly killed my sporting self-esteem and was now doing the same financially.

  A career related to sports still was at the back of my mind. This was also a time when Jerry Maguire was my favourite film and it inspired me to believe that I had it in me to make “Kho Kho” a global sport. Market realities soon hit me and very soon every client I met told me, “Bhai aise phaltu proposal mat lao, Is desh me sirf Sachin Tendulkar bikta hein.” The ghost of Sachin Tendulkar just wouldn’t let go, he was now chasing me in my corporate life as well.

  A year later, I gave up on my “Kho Kho” dream, much like my cricketing aspirations and I joined MTV India. This was at a time when MTV was actually a music channel and as they say, music is amongst the best ways to distract you from your woes and has the ability to heal damaged souls.

  Time went by and I spent the next few years surviving as a lowly marketing professional who took life one day at a time. My arch nemesis Sachin was now replaced by two species called MS-Powerpoint and MS-Excel. I soon realised that these were the only tools one needed to survive in the corporate world and unfortunately for me, I struggled with both.

  Apart from Sachin I had started hating another man called Bill Gates for creating this piece of software and damaging my self-esteem all over again.

  It was one of those boring days at work when India was playing a match against Sri Lanka on a placid wicket. My mental state was like that of Geoffrey Boycott playing a 100 ball 28 innings while I personally wished this was the Sharjah game where Sachin hammered the Aussies and Tony Greig went ballistic with his commentary praising Sachin. It was at this moment that I started impersonating Sachin Tendulkar especially in the context of him giving an interview to Tony Greig.

  Whilst I was at it, my colleague Jiggy George noticed it and said, “Awesome.” He gathered 3 more people and told me to do the imitation all over again. To my surprise they loved it too. I used to imitate commentators and cricketers as a student and here I was doing it in front of adults who seemed to like it and were having a ROFL moment. For the next seven days I had done this piece in front of all the departments within the company making me rise on the MTV popularity charts and even improving my relations with the HR department whose existence I always abhorred.

  I started noticing the gravity of this incident unfolding over the next few weeks. The environment around me seemed to be changing. People at MTV stopped questioning my marketing skills and my appraisals were no more about how ineffective I was in utilising our marketing budgets. The canteen boy started serving my lunch much before anyone else’s, even my colleagues who once feigned ignorance about my existence now insisted on offering me a ride in their cars instead of letting me get smashed in the crowded local trains.

  One day my boss actually made me speak to his wife in Sachin’s voice as he was running late for her birthday party and she forgave him because she thought he was actually sitting with Sachin for a business meeting. This was just the beginning.

  From then onwards, from the streets of Mumbai, to corporate conferences, board room meetings and even while salvaging client relations for my bosses, all they wanted me to do was imitate Sachin.

  It was an ironic situation. The man who had consistently shattered every aspect of my life over the last 10 years was now turning out to be my biggest asset. There was a somewhat sublime and heavenly feeling to all of this. My self-esteem which had hovered around 0 for a long time had now reached double figures. That 2-minute imitation of Sachin Tendulkar and Tony Greig was changing my life. Sachin slowly started becoming an intrinsic part of my life in a much more positive way.

  News of my skills started spreading outside the office too and one day another colleague of mine, Ashish Patil, asked me if I could meet a diamond merchant as he was looking for an entertainer who could do cricket jokes at a party. For that I would have to meet them in their office. After having gone through a body search and having had my bag scanned, I was lead through a long corridor by a mean looking security guard into a big white room. There seated across a big round table were 3 elderly diamond merchants. Incidentally one of them was bald like me and dressed in white, unlike me. As I was asked to take a seat, I felt momentarily transferred into that scene from the film Shaan and thought that my wrists would soon get locked on to my seat. Just when I thought the diamond merchant would ask “Maal kaha hai”, I was pleasantly surprised to hear him say “Beta suna hai Sachin ki nakal acchi utaarte ho, kuch karke batao.” Here I was behind closed doors being asked to imitate Sachin. My life was at ransom once more because of this man. Fortunately 10 minutes into what I now remember as a blur, the expressions on Shaakal’s face seemed satisfied enough to grant me my first paid event, performing along with the King of Bhangra – Daler Mehndi. I was absolutely ecstatic on being offered a platform where people beyond my office could finally see and hear me. News spread far and wide, slowly but surely. I was now getting invited to parties purely because of the fact that I could imitate Sachin well. The Mumbai glitterati started respecting me, it was quite strange because being a shy person, I was pretty uncomfortable with all the attention I was getting. Strangely, I wasn’t getting it for who I was, but rather for who I was imitating.

  I just failed to understand why I was suddenly becoming the toast of every party after being a non-entity all my life. Then I realised that at some level my imitation of Tony Greig’s interview with Sachin had struck the right chord to such an extent that people for that moment started thinking that Sachin was with them, which in turn gave them a tremendous sense of satisfaction and me a whole lot of respect. In a way they were subconsciously experiencing some sort of proximity to Sachin through me. The entire experience was very strange. Punjabi aunties would hug me. I was being invited for meals at farmhouses, felicitated by the teachers who hated me in school. It was bizarre! Such was the power and the mystique of a man called Sachin Tendulkar and here I was wielding that power. But as some of you Spiderman fans know – “With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility”.

  As time went by, I thought I was turning schizophrenic. I started living 2 lives – one moment I was the ordinary Peter Parker-like Vikram Sathaye and the next moment transformed into a Spiderman-like superhero – Sachin Tendulkar.

  Strange as it was I was beginning to enjoy myself being Sachin and in doing so I started discovering a unique relationship that the people of India had with Sachin. In this process I was also discovering that my impressions and jokes came under a genre of performing art called “Stand-up comedy” which till that time I had no clue about.

  My big break came when I was invited to do a 15-minute cricket sketch at the prestigious CEAT Cricket Awards where the entire Australian and Indian teams were seated in the first row. This was my opportunity to impress Sachin, which I knew would be a tough job considering I had competition from stars like Priyanka Chopra, Urmila Matondkar and Akshay Kumar. Despite being
scheduled to perform in the middle of the show, being the weakest link amongst a string of stars, I was pushed from the middle order to the tail end. I had a great event, but by the time my performance started, Sachin had already left.

  I was disappointed to say the least. The wait to meet him turned out to be longer than I had expected. Inspite of having started doing a few cricket events, it took me a good year and a half before I got my first opportunity to meet Sachin. I was invited by the Sri Lankan Cricket Board to perform at the Asia Cup banquet in Colombo in the presence of the Indian, Pakistani and Sri Lankan teams.

  By then I had heard from a few sources that Sachin was a serious kind of a guy who didn’t like being made fun of. I was sure of one thing, that no matter what happened I wouldn’t do anything to upset him because making God unhappy doesn’t fit well into the Hindu scheme of things. My friend and ex-Mumbai captain, Sameer Dighe suggested that I go say “hi” to Sachin before the show. I did that and it worked like magic. I had the entire Indian team congratulating me after the show. Even Inzamam came up to me and said, “Sabke samne pant utarne mein maja ata hein?” I just smiled…. Nobody wants to mess with Inzi bhai!

  The next morning I was having breakfast at the Taj Colombo coffee shop before boarding the flight back to Mumbai. Seated on the next table were Sachin, Bhajji, Yuvraj and Muralitharan. I was about to leave but somehow despite my nervousness I gathered enough courage to go and say hello to them. As soon as I did so I got a compliment from Murali on my Inzamam impression which made me relax a bit, then a few smiles from Bhajji, Yuvi and finally an acknowledgement from Sachin himself. This entire episode lasted not more than 10 seconds. I knew it would look bad if I stayed any longer, I wanted to wait, ask questions about everything under the sun but I had to leave. Just when I was about to turn and leave a thin voice said, “Why don’t you have coffee and go.” This was it, Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar had asked me to sit and have a coffee. Period! There was no way I would refuse even if I missed ten flights in a row. Well, the next 20 minutes I was listening to Murali and Sachin discussing the intricacies of the Doosra with a few inputs from Harbhajan Singh. Those words to me were as important as all the words that Lord Krishna told Arjuna though I didn’t have to fight any war.