Little Masters: Many similarities, yet so different

New Delhi: I have with me the two legends of the game, the world's twelve thousand Test run man, and the first 10,000 man of the game, a staggering 22,000 runs between my two guests today, the one and only Sunil Gavaskar and the one and only Sachin Tendulkar. If I go by the statistics, do you know how many centuries you have scored between the two of you in International cricket? Who has a better mathematical mind? Mr. Gavaskar, you would usually know how many hundreds have been scored?

Gavaskar: No, I am not Geoffrey Boycott here.

Sardesai: You have scored more than a hundred hundreds between the two of you, if you include Test cricket and one day internationals, but Sachin, 12,000 runs, has it sunk in? What does it mean to have scored 12,000 Test runs?

Tendulkar: To be honest, it still hasn't sunk in; I was just focussing on the ball because till I scored the runs whoever met me, the first question was, you have to do it and when are you doing it? So I was literally fed up answering them. I don't play for records and I just want to play my game and enjoy my cricket rather than chasing records. I know if I go and do that records will be broken automatically and I don't need to focus on that.

Sardesai: Is that the same way you felt when you scored 10,000 runs? Was it every day somebody telling you that Mr. Gavaskar, when are you scoring 10,000 runs?

Gavaskar: 10,000 was not something that people looked at, it was basically when one got close to that 29th century mark of Sir Donald Bradman, that was the time people, after the 28th century, you got off the aircraft and the aircraft maintenance guys would ask you about it, you had room service breakfast, the guy who delivered it, instead of asking for a complimentary match-ticket, he would say we want your 29th century here, so the pressure used to build up every time you went to the ground, we didn't have Ipods then so we had to listen to the "tali's" as well as "gaali's".

Sardesai: How do you deal with pressure? Do you keep it out, when you are out there; you keep out all the records?

Tendulkar: It's not that easy to switch off from all these things, our sub-conscious mind grasps all these things and somewhere it is stored. Even if you don't want to focus on all these things, the room-service guy will remind you of it, so somewhere it's stored and that's the last thing you want, you want to go out there with a blank mind. You just have to go out and bat, watch the ball as closely as possible and bat.

Sardesai: Mr. Gavaskar, you used to say something that I still don't quite believe that you never used to know your score that you did not even know when you were on 99?

Gavaskar: Yes because I was not interested in how many runs I was batting on, I was only interested in how many runs I got after I got out.

Sardesai: So you never had a look at the scoreboard?

Gavaskar: I had a vague idea, for the simple reason, because if you are on 46, and you know you need four runs to get to a 50, you might play a shot to a ball which you normally wouldn't in just trying to get that boundary. If you are on 96 you might play a shot that would get you out, so the thing to do would be to forget how many runs you are and then only see your score when you got out.

Sardesai: Are you the same Sachin?

Tendulkar: No, I do look at the scoreboard.

Sardesai: So, in a sense, both of you legends had a very different approach to run making. Did you, Mr Gavaskar, for example, go ten runs at a time?

Gavaskar: I did it in sessions, not in 10s and 20s, again you are putting yourself under pressure when you are looking at any target. As I said, it could be that you are on six, and you would say let me go to 10 and my next target will be 20, so you are putting yourself under that pressure. You just play by sessions, so you know that you have to play two hours before lunch, two hours until tea and then one and a half hours, it was five and a half hours. So if you did that, at the normal scoring rate, you knew you might get your 100 somewhere.

Sardesai: Was that your philosophy too Sachin, bat session by session?

Tendulkar: I played a little differently, a lot depended on my rhythm, my bat swing and if I felt everything was going well on that particular day, then I would sometimes choose the bowlers, like these are the bowlers that I am going to go after and I felt that in patches you score plenty of boundaries and then all of a sudden, you get these strike bowlers bowling disciplined lines and you need to just hold yourself back a bit and set different targets. There have been occasions where I have gone into the field with the frame of mind that I am going to bat at least for a session and then look at the next session to attack. Sometimes, in the first session, I tell myself that I am just going to try and hang in there, try and spend as much time as possible, it varies match by match.

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