'Achrekar sir built foundation on which I stand'

Shivaji Park. Sachin Tendulkar. Ramakant Achrekar. The cricketing world sought after to know more about this link only after a cherubic-faced 16-year-old took guard in Karachi against Imran Khan, Wasim Akram, and Waqar Younis on November 15, 1989. But to those who adopted the sport in the maidans of Mumbai, Achrekar did not coach cricket to youngsters, he created cricketers out of them. “Other coaches taught youngsters how you can bat and bowl; Achrekar skilled them to play matches,” former Mumbai captain Milind Rege told Mirror the day past.

Sanjay Manjrekar, who has witnessed the upward thrust of Tendulkar from shut quarters, maintains that by the time Tendulkar was once in his teens, he had hit a a long way higher choice of balls than any child his age.

The tale is going that the moment Tendulkar got out in a maidan match, Achrekar would ask him to hop onto his scooter. The coach and the student would go back and forth to the adjacent maidan, where Tendulkar would get to bat in another match. By the time he was once 10 years old, he was once enjoying around 15 matches a month, mostly against boys two times his age. Tendulkar himself has mentioned that those matches performed a huge phase in his early building.

Yesterday, a distraught Tendulkar mentioned his “sir will enrich the sport in heaven”. “He taught me not to only play straight, but additionally live straight,” Tendulkar mentioned. “Like a large number of his scholars, I learnt the ABC of cricket from sir. His contribution not to simply my cricket occupation however to my existence can't be captured in phrases. He has built the foundation that I stand on lately,” he mentioned.

It was once a ritual among Achrekar’s scholars to hunt his blessings each Guru Purnima. Tendulkar could be joined through his wife Anjali at Achrekar’s space in Dadar.

“I had met sir along side a few of his scholars ultimate month,” Tendulkar reminisced. “Like at all times, we shared fun as we remembered the old times.”

Sachin Tendulkar and his daughter Sara with Ramakant Achrekar at the launch of Tendulkar’s autobiography in 2014


In one in every of his interviews, Achrekar had narrated his first assembly with Tendulkar. “His brother Ajit had brought him to me and I asked him to return again the next day to come in right kind cricket garments. The first time I noticed Sachin, he seemed to be just like the other boys. But then I watched him in the nets and he was once middling the ball all the time, hitting it exhausting, never enjoying defensive. I assumed, ‘baat toh hain’.”

It was once at Achrekar’s insistence that Tendulkar’s family shifted him to Shardashram School in Dadar. It meant the child had to live with a relative in Dadar, clear of his Bandra East space. And again, on Achrekar’s insistence, the Raj Singh Dungarpurcontrolled Cricket Club of India bent the foundations to allow a 13-year-old Tendulkar to play for the membership.

Born in 1932 in Malvan in Sindhudurg, close to Goa, Achrekar landed in Mumbai at the age of 11, when his parents decided to shift. He in the end discovered employment with the State Bank of India where he shaped a close friendship with a colleague, Ajit Wadekar, who went directly to captain Mumbai and India. Achrekar himself was once a batsman-wicketkeeper who performed one firstclass match -- for All-India State Bank against Hyderabad in 1964, scoring 30.

He started coaching cricket only around 1968 when a youngster approached him for advice. That teenager was once Ramnath Parkar who performed for India in 1980s, kickstarting the ‘Achrekar manufacturing unit’ that produced Balwinder Singh Sandhu, Lalchand Rajput, Chandrakant Pandit, Vinod Kambli, Ajit Agarkar, Ramesh Powar, Praveen Amre, the present Team India batting coach Sanjay Bangar, Paras Mhambrey, and Sameer Dighe, all of whom went directly to play for India. This is besides over 100 firstclass cricketers coached through him.

As Tendulkar mentioned, the Gods could be in search of a couple of cricketing pointers from his coach.

Tendulkar, Kambli achieve Achrekar’s home to pay their ultimate respects



'Achrekar sir built foundation on which I stand' 'Achrekar sir built foundation on which I stand' Reviewed by Kailash on January 03, 2019 Rating: 5
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