As he stepped up to receive his Player of the Tournament award after India had clinched the T20 World Cup Sunday, an emotional Sanju Samson recalled how he felt broken, his dreams shattered, after a wretched run of form. Fortunately for Samson, help was just a call away.Samson became the latest in a long line of Indian batters to seek help from the God of cricket, Sachin Tendulkar. Like the others, he wasn’t disappointed.Go Beyond The Boundary with our YouTube channel. SUBSCRIBE NOW!“When I was sitting outside in Australia (during the T20Is in Oct) … I wasn’t playing a game, I thought about what mindset is required,” Samson said, “I reached out to ‘Sir’ and had long conversations with him.”Samson spoke from the heart about the value of Sachin’s guidance — “that clarity, game preparation, awareness and game sense”. He revealed, “Even the night before the final, Sir called me up to check how I am feeling.”
There’s a reason Sachin has been referred to as a ‘university of batting’ by Sunil Gavaskar, himself once a mentor to Tendulkar. Former India head coach and former South African opening batter Gary Kirsten, too had referred to Tendulkar in similar terms.Despite spending over a decade away from international cricket, Tendulkar still keenly watches games and makes sharp observations about a batter’s technique. The Master doesn’t air these observations publicly, but if the player approaches him, he is always known to be ready to help.‘Tendulkar brings honesty to table & keeps things simple’Cast your mind back to India’s 2011 World Cup, when Yuvraj Singh endured a horrendous time with the bat a year before the event. Questions swirled over whether he should even make the squad. During the camp, as the left-hander battled a dip in both form and fitness, Tendulkar told him, “You will matter when it matters most.” Yuvraj went on to become Player of the Tournament.In 2014, Virat Kohli said he was a psychological wreck after he could score just 134 runs in 10 innings on his maiden England tour as pacer James Anderson traumatised him outside off-stump. After his return, Kohli sent an SOS to Tendulkar and the two worked for a few days at the indoor nets at the Bandra Kurla Complex.Kohli later said that their conversations weren’t just about technical adjustments or batting. “It was about how he coped with such times… One thing he told me was, ‘You should always do what works for you.’ Before the game, if you do not feel like batting in the nets, don’t bat in the nets. You should never do it just because other people are batting for half an hour in the nets,” Kohli had mentioned during an interview with The Cricket Monthly.Kohli then went on to smash four hundreds in Australia in the 2014-2015 Border-Gavaskar Trophy.Before the England tour in 2025, newly-crowned Test captain Shubman Gill too admitted that he had sought Tendulkar’s advice on how to succeed in English conditions.His advice to Gill about defending straight and scoring square enabled him to log 754 runs in the five-match series.“The best thing about ‘Master’ is that he knows what conditions he is talking about. He makes people who approach him understand how to go about playing in certain conditions, respect them and do what works for them,” says Atul Ranade, Tendulkar’s childhood friend and currently Mumbai’s Ranji team fielding coach.Modern-day cricketers have plenty of coaches they can approach. Why then do they still turn to Tendulkar for advice? “What he brings to the table is honesty,” Ranade explained, “He’ll also keep it as simple as possible, which makes it easy for the person to understand.”Out of favour batter Prithvi Shaw, who scored a Test hundred on debut in Oct 2018 against the West Indies, didn’t just receive technical tips while training at the Mumbai Cricket Association ground, but was also told to mend his ways. “Waapas track pe aaja (Better get back on track),” Tendulkar reportedly told the captain of the India U-19 team that won the World Cup in New Zealand in early 2018.“He’s always there for them; he always has time to give back to the game. He’s always ready to help in whatever way that he can,” Ranade said.Ranade remembered when in 2014, Sachin and Ranade were playing a game of badminton just a few months after the batsman’s retirement. “He (Tendulkar) told us: ‘Don’t disturb me unless one phone call comes’. Puzzled, we asked, ‘Who will call?’‘Rohit will call,’ he replied,” said Ranade. Rohit Sharma had just started opening for India in ODIs, and as expected, his call came. Tendulkar stopped the game to speak with him for nearly half an hour.Ranade said Tendulkar also played a major role in getting Sharma to the Mumbai Indians from the Deccan Chargers in 2011. Sharma went on to captain the team to five IPL championships.
