Sachin Tendulkar's selfie

Sachin Tendulkar is to cricket what Muhammad Ali is to boxing, what Diego Maradona is to football. But unlike the greatest boxer and footballer, the greatest cricketer has always got his bat to speak for him. Which is where the pluses and minuses of Playing It My Way lie.
For Sachin fans, it’s a mother lode. Not only do they get to read about their hero’s childhood (playing pranks as well as cricket), his kids, his favourite singers (Lata, Asha, U2), but they are also given a darshan into his emotions at various key moments of his life.

For Sachin admirers and cricket enthusiasts, however, the good stuff lies in between all these emo bits. Take the passage about Rahul Dravid and Sachin working out a way across the pitch to read Chris Cairns’ reverse swing. Or how he gauges his captaincy (“I never felt totally comfortable with the relationship with the selectors”), and dealt with his injuries, the seriousness of which most of us get to know of here in this book.

“I predicted that [Chaminda Vaas] would be expecting me to paddle-sweep and would change his line and bowl to me on the stumps. I was proved right and he bowled a ball on middle stump which I played towards square leg for a single,” he writes of the moment leading to that historic 35th ton in December 2005 against Sri Lanka. There are enough ringside views from the master in the book. One just has to cross a lot of ‘fanzine’ terrain to get to them.

For those on whom the pre-publication tease of the ‘Greg Chappell’ expose – or the disapproval of Kapil Dev as coach – worked, Playing It My Way could be like following a Test after expecting an IPL game. But Sachin’s love for the game, despite his ‘first boy in class’ demeanour, shines through.

Once this book settles on the shelves, it will be the prime handbook on cricket’s finest exponent by cricket’s finest exponent. Even as we wait for a definitive Sachin biography that, unlike an autobiography, can be a portrait of the artist rather than his selfie.