Sanjay Manjrekar talks about his much speculated relationship with Sachin Tendulkar

Sachin Tendulkar is one such cricketer in the cricket fraternity who in his two-decade-old decorated career was showered with immense praise and rare criticism. He retired as one of the most accomplished batsmen of all time after representing India in a world record 200 Tests, and 463 ODIs and retired with almost all the major batting records to his name.

He is the only player to have scored 100 international centuries, the first batsman to score a double century in ODIs, the holder of the record for the most number of runs in both ODI and Test cricket. Hence, it is understandable that a successful cricketer such as him had fans around the world and marginal critics.

However, his former teammate Sanjay Manjrekar is one of the few people who has not hesitated from critiquing the batting legend. Two examples of instances when Manjrekar had openly put forth his opinion about Sachin Tendulkar were when he was struggling towards the end of his career and also when the World Cup-winning star had become a Rajya Sabha member.

“Actually shocked by the story itself. First by the nomination as it came without any warning. And that Sachin has accepted it is even more shocking.”

“When I visualise what Sachin could possibly do after retirement, I thought something connected to cricket, coaching and all that, may be some business or social activity. But a Rajya Sabha MP after retirement or even at this stage of career is something that was not even my wildest guess,” Manjrekar had said in 2012 to The Hindu.

He was also bold enough to call Tendulkar ‘an elephant in the dressing room’ after he was not dropped from the playing eleven despite consistent failures. All these comments from Manjrekar gave rise to speculations that all was not well between him and Tendulkar.

However, Manjrekar, in his newly launched autobiography titled ‘Imperfect,’ cleared all the air, stating that all is well between him and his former teammate, “We bump into each other at grounds. He looks at me. I look at him. We are fine,” wrote Manjrekar, who scored an unbeaten century in what was Tendulkar’s Test debut in Karachi way back in 1989, as reported by TOI.