Five life lessons we can learn from Sachin Tendulkar's career

Always stay ahead of the game

Australia played India in a warm-up game at the Wankhede once and Sachin observed that Warne wasn't going round the wicket to him. Sachin decided to arrive in Chennai, the venue for the first test, 4 days before the start of the game and started practicing leg-spin bowling from around the stump.

The reason being, he felt that Warne saved bowling into the rough area from around the wickets for the first test match and wanted to surprise Sachin Tendulkar.

On the second day of the Chennai test, after a good rough was created just outside Sachin's leg stump, Warne decided to bowl round the wicket, the first ball that he bowled, Sachin knelt slightly and clobbered the ball over the mid-wicket boundary for a six! The world stood in awe of this genius.

The reason he could do this, was because he didn't merely pick up the technique of playing the game, he learnt it.

A lot of us are imbued with exceptional talents (known or unknown to us), but it is what we do with that talent, that discerns the Champions from the ordinary. Your moment of glory may be in your proximity too, just ensure that you read the trends and stay relevant when the opportunity stands up to be recognised.

On this special day, when Sachin Tendulkar turns 43, it is beyond the explicable power of words to state what he has achieved. What is within their powers though, marginally, is to extract learnings from his extraordinary career.

To leave you all, I’d just share what he said in an interview to Mr. Harsha Bhogle, he said, “I don’t win my team matches when I’m at the ground, I win my team matches in the nets at 4 am every morning while the world catches on to an extra couple of hours of sleep.”

There’s the secret of 15921 Test runs, 18426 ODI runs and 100 international centuries revealed.

Happy Birthday Sachin. Long live.