Five life lessons we can learn from Sachin Tendulkar's career

For a very long time, Cricket for Indians was watching one man, the most exceptional stroke player possible. It was watching, as they say, God in human flesh.

Cricket was watching Sachin Tendulkar, and while he gave us innumerable joyous moments, there are maybe a few things that he also gave us as lessons from his career.

Here are five things we can learn from his career.

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Practice makes a man perfect

There’s always a lot of talk about Sachin Tendulkar’s staggering numbers and how his abilities ensured that he sustained those numbers. I’m not too sure if even some of us look at the consistency in the work ethic of this champion.

As a schoolboy, Sachin played 55 games without a break. For 55 days, he would practice for 2 hours, play a game of 6 hours, practice for another 2 hours and by the time he returned home (which wasn’t where his parents lived) he was too tired and slept on his dining table.

Let’s recall, how many of us can take up an assignment and say, right, this requires 4 weeks, I’ll be persistent, gritty and dedicated and finish this. How many of us are required to burn those extra hours to create something extraordinary?

Think about it. It is as much of Sachin’s abilities, as it is of his outlandish work ethic that conjures the champion in him.

Grit and determination

Sachin was ready by the beginning of the 1989 season to be picked in the Indian squad which was to travel to the West Indies, but the selectors wished to protect him, only 16 then, from the dreadful pace battery of the mighty Caribbeans which had Ambrose, Marshall and the likes.

And Sachin was disappointed, he wanted to play. When asked what would’ve happened if they hurt him, he said, “I’d get better the next time.” How’s that for attitude?

In 1989, the selectors just couldn’t look away from the outrageous numbers that Sachin was producing and selected him for the tour to Pakistan. In the last test of that series, the pitch was lush green at ­­­­­­­Sialkot and the intimidating Waqar-Imran duo were spewing venom.

The second ball that Sachin faced was a bouncer from Waqar which hit the batsman right on his nose, and he collapsed, blood gushing from his nostrils and partially unconscious. The then physio Ali Irani and the non-striker, Navjot Sidhu both pleaded him to leave the ground.

Sachin, a tender, young 16-year-old kid, away from home, away from comforts, stood up and said, “Main khelega” (I’ll play). The next ball from Waqar and Sachin pummeled that with a straight bat, one bounce and…the rest as they say became a part of a glorified history.

Imagine all the sick days all of us have called at work, all those languishing mornings where we didn’t wish to get out of bed irrespective of the job at hand. Sachin as a young batsman, who was playing his first ever series could have easily went off the field, no qualms. But he chose to stay and fight and make a gritty 57.

The next time you feel there’s a hardship that should keep you from work, or you feel life is being unfair, compare that to the pain of a broken nose in front of bowlers who could repeat the same feat again, on one’s debut series. Sachin could’ve easily cursed God for his fate, instead, he became one himself, decide for yourselves!

Champions emerge through trivialities, to become classics.

Champions learn quickly

On his first tour to England, Sachin seemed to be struggling as he got out playing forward to the swinging deliveries. Sunil Gavaskar went up to him and said, ‘In England, play the ball late’.

The next game on, you could see Sachin waiting for the ball and standing tall to punch it down the ground. He scored a 68, soon after which, he went on to make his first test century at Old Trafford in Manchester. He had mastered the art others took years to understand. Because he was willing to learn.

We have had, on so many occasions in our lives, opportunities to learn and grow, right before us but how you treat that opportunity determines the fate of your maiden Test Century. So, the next time a learning opportunity offers itself, grab it with both hands, your own maiden test century might be somewhere around the corner.

Attitude towards hardships

It is the 2003 World Cup finals and Australia have piled up excessive misery on Indian bowlers and the Indian fans alike. The easiest job for the Indian team would have been to sit back and say, ‘Well, we’ve done well to come up to this stage of a World Championship, let’s be proud of that and pack our bags’.

Instead, Sachin stepped into the dressing room and asked a question to all his fellow teammates, he asked, “Can we score a boundary in every over?” given the names in the then batting lineup, everyone replied affirmatively, he said, “great, that means we now have a score of 200 from 50 balls, all that we need to do is score the remaining 160 off 250 balls, now is that gettable?”

What happened post that shouldn’t be delved into, but what we mustn’t oversee is the ability of a champion to look for a winning way when the world around him is pushing him to defeat.

How often do we, in strange cities, stranger circumstances and tough scenarios back ourselves and say, yes this is gettable, and if I can get this I’ll have achieved a feat others find monumental. For behind every thorn of hardship is a blossoming fruit of success awaiting to be plucked.

Maybe, your World Cup moment isn’t far off too.

Always stay ahead of the game

Australia played India in a warm-up game at the Wankhede once and Sachin observed that Warne wasn't going round the wicket to him. Sachin decided to arrive in Chennai, the venue for the first test, 4 days before the start of the game and started practicing leg-spin bowling from around the stump.

The reason being, he felt that Warne saved bowling into the rough area from around the wickets for the first test match and wanted to surprise Sachin Tendulkar.

On the second day of the Chennai test, after a good rough was created just outside Sachin's leg stump, Warne decided to bowl round the wicket, the first ball that he bowled, Sachin knelt slightly and clobbered the ball over the mid-wicket boundary for a six! The world stood in awe of this genius.

The reason he could do this, was because he didn't merely pick up the technique of playing the game, he learnt it.

A lot of us are imbued with exceptional talents (known or unknown to us), but it is what we do with that talent, that discerns the Champions from the ordinary. Your moment of glory may be in your proximity too, just ensure that you read the trends and stay relevant when the opportunity stands up to be recognised.

On this special day, when Sachin Tendulkar turns 43, it is beyond the explicable power of words to state what he has achieved. What is within their powers though, marginally, is to extract learnings from his extraordinary career.

To leave you all, I’d just share what he said in an interview to Mr. Harsha Bhogle, he said, “I don’t win my team matches when I’m at the ground, I win my team matches in the nets at 4 am every morning while the world catches on to an extra couple of hours of sleep.”

There’s the secret of 15921 Test runs, 18426 ODI runs and 100 international centuries revealed.

Happy Birthday Sachin. Long live.