THE WEEKLY NEWSMAGAZINE April 29, 2013 `35 RNI NO. 7044/61 www.outlookindia.com In this issue... Volume LIII, No. 16 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Krishna Prasad 40 ON FORTY EXECUTIVE EDITOR Bishwadeep Moitra BUSINESS EDITOR Sunit Arora SENIOR EDITOR Sunil Menon 20 50, 54 DEPUTY EDITORS Sourav GANGULY Muttiah Uttam Sengupta, S.N.M. Abdi POLITICAL EDITOR Saba Naqvi brings some straight batting tales MURALITHARAN, BOOKS EDITOR Sheela Reddy FEATURES EDITOR Satish Padmanabhan Glen MCGRATH FOREIGN EDITOR Pranay Sharma 28 Shortened BOUNDARY ASSOCIATE EDITORS Friendly swipes from old foes S.B. Easwaran, Manisha Saroop, A hundred Sachin centuries, a Namrata Joshi, Anuradha Raman ASSISTANT EDITORS hundred reasons 56 Arindam Mukherjee, Lola Nayar, Sasi Nair, Brian STODDART Prachi Pinglay-Plumber (Mumbai) The sports scholar on how Sachin is SENIOR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENTS 32 Peter ENGLISH Arti Sharma & Prarthna Gahilote (Mumbai), bookended by Manmohan Singh Dola Mitra (Calcutta), The Australian sports journalist on Toral Varia Deshpande (Delhi) SPECIAL CORRESPONDENTS the marquee man extraordinaire 58 Pragya Singh, Chandrani Banerjee, Amitabh BACHCHAN Amba Batra Bakshi PRINCIPAL CORRESPONDENT: Panini Anand 34 One superstar on another SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: Neha Bhatt Tom HEENAN, David CORRESPONDENTS Debarshi Dasgupta, Priyadarshini Sen DUNSTAN 62 CHENNAI Pushpa Iyengar Yohan BLAKE HYDERABAD Madhavi Tata The greater don? Two sports The ‘Beast’ on how he has always BHOPAL K.S. Shaini historians revisit the old debate COPY DESK Saikat Niyogi (Assistant Copy Editor), been a secret Sachin fan Siddharth Premkumar PHOTOGRAPHERS Narendra Bisht (Deputy Photo Editor) 40 Anthony BATEMAN 64 Jitender Gupta (Chief Photographer), Sania MIRZA Tribhuvan Tiwari (Deputy Chief Photographer), On the man who taught the English Sanjay Rawat, Sandipan Chatterjee, How he is the epitome of grace Apoorva Salkade, Amit Haralkar, that if you are good enough, you are S. Rakshit (Senior Coordinator), under pressure J.S. Adhikari (Photo Researcher) old enough DESIGN Deepak Sharma (Art Director), Ashish Bagchi, 68 Kadambari MURALI-WADE Leela, Kuldeep Bhardwaj (Chief Infographist), Devi Prasad, Padam Gupta 40, already? ILLUSTRATOR: Sorit EDITORIAL MANAGER: Sasidharan Kollery LIBRARIAN: Alka Gupta 78 Lata MANGESHKAR, EDITORIAL CHAIRMAN: VINOD MEHTA BUSINESS OFFICE Asha BHOSLE PRESIDENT: Indranil Roy CFO: Vinodkumar Panicker The nightingale sisters on how VICE PRESIDENTS Sachin’s bat sings Johnson D’Silva, Shishir Saxena SENIOR GENERAL MANAGERS Uma Srinivasan (Chennai), 86 L. Arokia Raj (Circulation), Fascinating 40 Satish Raghavan (F&A) GENERAL MANAGERS Check your SachinQ Kabir Khattar (Corp), Rashmi Lata Swarup, B.S. Johar (Subs) HEAD BRAND & MARKETING: Shrutika Dewan ASSISTANT GENERAL MANAGERS Amit Vaz (West), Anindya Banerjee (West), G. Ramesh (South), Rajendra Kurup CHIEF MANAGER: Shashank Dixit Issue editors SENIOR MANAGERS BORIA MAJUMDAR and Astha Sharma, Deshraj Jaswal, Neelkanth Sawant, Shekhar Kumar Pandey SATISH PADMANABHAN ZONAL SALES MANAGER Vinod Kumar (North) Research MANAGERS: Diwan Singh Bisht, Nevile D’souza, HARINI RANA, Times Now Rupali Biswas, Suneel Raju, Vinod Joshi MENTOR: MAHESHWER PERI HEAD OFFICE AB-10, S.J. Enclave, New Delhi - 110 029 Tel: 011-33505500; Fax: 26191420 Customer care helpline: 011-33505653 e-mail: [email protected] For editorial queries: [email protected] For subscription helpline: [email protected] For other queries: [email protected] OTHER OFFICES MUMBAI Tel: 022-33545000; Fax: 33545100 CALCUTTA Tel: 33545400; Fax: 22823593 CHENNAI Tel: 33506300; Fax: 28582250 BANGALORE Tel: 33236100; Fax: 25582810 HYDERABAD Tel: 2337 1144; Fax: 23375676 Printed and published by Maheshwer Peri on behalf of Outlook Publishing (India) Pvt. Ltd. Editor: Krishna Prasad. Printed at IPP Limited, C 4-C 11, Phase-II, Noida and published from AB-10, S.J. Enclave, New Delhi-110 029 Cover Design: Bishwadeep Moitra; Photograph: Narendra Bisht Published for the week of April 23-29, 2013 Released on April 22, 2013 Total no. of pages 90 + Covers OUTLOOK 29 April 2013 3 APOORVA SALKADE Last hurdle The World Cup won: one of Sachin’s finest hours SACHINXL Keeper Of Our Hopes MITABH Bachchan summed it up nicely. “I’d be embarrassed if you com- pare Sachin with me for I have not achieved half of what he has.” Yes, he was being modest. No question about it. But there aren’t many in India about whom India’s greatest living icon can say such a thing. AThere isn’t anyone else for whom Lata Mangeshkar will, unasked, sing a couple of lines of Mera saaya. As Lataji told me with a smile, “He loves this song.” And there is no one else for whom Asha Bhosle will frame the words of her favourite song in her own handwriting and send it across, hoping he’d put it up in his music room. Sachin Tendulkar is a pan-Indian love affair. Rather, he is trans-national. He is the only cricketer to get a standing ovation in every cricket-playing country in the world. For us Indians, he is a national obsession and has been so for the past 24 years. Despite a billion people living his life for him, he has performed at his best for two decades and more. He has given Indian cricket a voice that reverberates around the world and has single-handedly given our cricket a kind of reverence seldom rivalled in the annals of the sport. For no other person could we have assembled the line-up we have in this very special effort. The best of India and the world loves Sachin. And the best of the best, across professions and disciplines, would want to wish him a very happy 40th birthday. His continuing passion and enthusiasm imbues the cliche, ‘Forty is the new twenty’, with a new meaning. That’s what we call the issue. Happy birthday, Sachin. Boria Majumdar Guest Editor 18 29 April 2013 OUTLOOK Saurav GANGULY Straight Batting Tales He saw the artistry closer than the rest—a tribute to warm, humane Sachin ACHIN and I go back a real long way. The first all that he was blessed with special talent. He would hold time I met Sachin was at an under-14 camp at the bat lower than the norm; this would mean that he’d not Indore. Both of us were 13, Sachin eight months feel the pressure of his heavy bat. He already had all the younger, and we were there at the camp con- shots in the book and timed the ball beautifully. Sducted by Vasu Paranjpe under the aegis of the Madhya After that first meeting, Sachin had catapulted himself into Pradesh Cricket Association. Sanjay Jagdale, the current national reckoning within a couple of years and had already bcci secretary, was instrumental in putting the camp scored hundreds at the Ranji and Irani trophies before he was together. The first thing I noticed was that the curly- 17. It wasn’t a surprise that at 16 he was picked for the Indian haired boy from Bombay just loved to bat. He was the first tour to Pakistan in 1989. I did not watch many of his knocks in at the nets and just kept batting. Such was his passion and Pakistan as I was touring with the Bengal team. However, the intensity that Vasu had to eventually pull him out on occa- one match I watched was the one in which he took apart sions. Sachin would just bat, bat and bat. At the camp itself, Abdul Qadir. It was a rain-curtailed odi reduced to a 20 over everyone was talking about him and it was apparent to us a side exhibition contest. However, when it is an India versus Photograph: GETTY IMAGES SACHIN XL Peter ENGLISH Marquee Man Extraordinaire Awe, fear, respect...he inspires it all among us Australians NTIL Sachin Tendulkar travelled to Australia, being “a great bond between Aus tralia and India”. Again, India’s touring sides were viewed by the Tendulkar’s role in this link cannot be understated. locals more as a group of men from an exotic Even though he has been in the international game for land than an outfit to be treated seriously. Of almost 25 years, few cricketers have risen so high so qui- Ucourse, the generalisation was grossly unfair towards a ckly. With curls hiding behind his oversized helmet and proud nation with a diverse and inspiring history—as pads rising almost to his hips, Tendulkar was just 18 when well as being a production line for artistic cricketers. But he first played Down Under. His sleeves were rolled neatly it is all the more reason to praise Tendulkar. Not only did to the forearm, and as he waved his broad wand in the sum- he create wide-eyed spectators with on-field deeds, but mer of 1991-92, he quickly established himself as a fear- he opened minds away from the ground. ful-yet-fascinating threat. At the scg, his unbeaten 148 was Instead of Test series with India being viewed as part of described by Richie Benaud, in awe in the commentary the interval between Australia’s major battles against box, as “one of the best innings I’ve ever seen”. Shane England, South Africa and the West Indies, the engage- Warne was on debut, looking more like a surfer than a spin- ments were quickly upgraded to marquee status from the ner, and spent the first of many demoralising days wonder- middle of Tendulkar’s career. In the 44 years before his ing whether any type of deception was possible. The soon- first Test against Australia, in Brisbane in 1991, the sides to-be-greatest spinner was rarely lethal to the best batsman had contested 11 Test series. The recently completed of the era. He would go on to dismiss Tendulkar only three campaign was the 12th in which Tendulkar had appeared times in 12 Tests.