A twenty-four-year-long habit can be mighty difficult to quit. More so when the person in question is Sachin Tendulkar who is used to having a billion eyes following him day in and day out.
The recently-retired cricketing maestro in a candid tete-a-tete with Zee Media`s Sumit Awasthi said the feeling was yet to sink in and he was yet to come to terms with the fact that his cricketing career was all but over. But the cricketer in him was far from satisfied. “It is yet to sink in. But the guilty feeling that one would have with by missing practice or failing to wake up early is gone. There is no pressure on me now,” said Tendulkar.
The ‘little master’ informed that his farewell speech (that left many in tears) was partly rehearsed and partly on the spur of the moment. “I had planned (the speech) and what I wanted to say. There were names on the paper, but words came from the heart,” he said.
The decision to retire he said was his, and he is now convinced that it was the right time. There were no regrets he said, adding, “I think the time was right. Every person that I shared my plan about retirement got emotional. But I wasn’t emotional at all, I knew it was the right time and the right decision. And the manner in which my last series panned out and the send-off I got—the way all these things coincided left no scope for any regret.”
And Tendulkar had one more thing planned out — the venue for his farewell, Mumbai. And this was to give his mother a surprise. “I wanted my last match to happen in India. And more so when there were two matches planned (against West Indies) I asked them to hold it in Mumbai because I wanted to surprise my mother,” said Tendulkar.
Thank You, Sachin 