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Sachin Tendulkar stood like a diamond among brilliantly-talented batsmen even in school days

We all have known how Sachin Tendulkar used to practice in the nets ahead of any match. His intensity, when it came to preparing for a game, was second to none. It was not something that he developed only after playing for India. It was part of him from his school days.

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Former Mumbai Ranji player Kiran Mokashi (left) with Madhav Apte, president, Legends Club, CCI, in Mumbai on Friday
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We all have known how Sachin Tendulkar used to practice in the nets ahead of any match. His intensity, when it came to preparing for a game, was second to none. It was not something that he developed only after playing for India. It was part of him from his school days.

Former Mumbai off-spinner Kiran Mokashi, who has seen Tendulkar from his teens and who has played alongside the only cricketer with a hundred international hundreds in his early days, recalled how the legendary batsman practiced even before he began playing for Mumbai (then Bombay).

Recalling those days at the Cricket Club of India's Legends Club on Friday to mark the 42nd birthday of the maestro, Mokashi said: “Even in his school days, Tendulkar stood out like a diamond from among a brilliantly-talented bunch of players that also included Vinod Kambli, Mayur Kadrekar and Amit Dani. They practiced on absolutely muddy tracks of Kamat Memorial nets of Shivaji Park where the ball did all sorts of things from bouncing to keeping low, and Sachin batted brilliantly at the nets so much so that crowd came to watch him bat at the nets. Those days, there was a dedicated crowd to watch the young batsman bat,” Mokashi, 58 and who played in 47 first-class matches between 1980-81 and 1990-91 and took 146 wickets, said.

Mokashi said that Tendulkar loved to bat at the nets for a very very long time. “After the regular nets and when others left, Sachin will be after with his pads on. He would imagine where his nine fielders were and played through the gaps. We bowlers would try to cheat him saying he would have been out to the imaginary fielder but still he would clear the gaps. He would lift over the infield and would get 100 runs in 60-70 balls. That was his way of practicing. His nature was always to compete with the bowlers.”

This was similar to what Australian legend Don Bradman used to do. Madhav Apte, former Test batsman and president of Legends Club, remembered what Vinoo Mankad once said: “Mankad used to say 'On the 1947 India tour of Australia in which Bradman scored a lot of runs, he would hit the ball to the left or right of the fielders wherever you placed them. It was most unnerving to bowl to Don'. Every ball is played with a purpose. That's the secret of great batsmen.”

Mokashi also said that Tendulkar would play shots that conventional batsmen would not play. “He would hold the bat so low down the handle, something that the later generation followed. In the first three or four months that Sachin was selected for Mumbai, he did not get a game. Sandeep Patil, coach/manager, did not give him to bat even in the nets. Before the Baroda game, Sachin smashed Raju Kulkarni, one of the fiercest bowlers for Mumbai then, in the nets and that's how he made his Ranji debut and within a year and a half, played for India,” the 58-year-old Mokashi recalled.

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