His is a career studded with milestones and records, but retired batting legend Sachin Tendulkar today revealed that not getting a long stint as India’s cricket captain was a disappointment he found tough to overcome given the number of challenges he endured.
Tendulkar’s two tenures as captain of India were not very successful and are considered the rare blips in what was otherwise a glittering 24 years in international cricket.
He first took over as skipper in 1996 but by 1997 the team was performing so poorly that he was dropped from the position.
“To me, cricket is team work and not about individuals. There are stages where captain come into play and captain will guide, take important decisions on the field but eventually the batsmen would have to go out and score runs and the bowlers have to land the ball in those areas,” Tendulkar said at the ‘India Today Conclave’ here.
“I was dropped from captaincy after only 12-13 months in my first stint. That was a disappointment because you select the captain thinking that he is going to take the team forward and then if that stint is not long enough, then the success rate becomes zero. If you play four matches, you lose two, then you are 50 per cent successful, so on and so forth.
“My tenure was not long enough and it was a big disappointment for me to overcome,” Tendulkar revealed.
The 41-year-old, who bid adieu to the game in 2013, drew comparison with his own captaincy stint to India’s Test tours of 2011 to England and Australia.
“Cricket to me is a team sport and when I was a captain there were some tough tours. We went to the West Indies and they were a better side. Went to South Africa and Australia, there were number of challenges that I met with.
“One common thing that I experienced during my captaincy period and 2011 when India went to tour England and Australia, we lost Test matches because there were no runs on the board and we gave away far too many runs,” Tendulkar said.
“The same thing happened during tours under my captaincy when there were not many runs on the Board and we could not pick those 20 wickets. We lost four Test matches in England and four in Australia,” he recalled.
