Five things Sachin Tendulkar doesn't want to be remembered for

Sachin Tendulkar  is the ideal sportsman — he seldom gets into trouble and is never embroiled in any controversy for too long. And even if there’s trouble brewing over something he did, he’ll rarely lash out against critics.

Considering his career spanned more than two decades, all credit to him for rarely putting a foot wrong.

Cricket in India sees triumph and tragedy in equal measures — and while Sachin will be remembered for the former, we fished out a few bad moments from his brilliant career.

The Chappell Controversy

The baap of all coach vs team controversies in cricket has to be Greg Chappell vs all the senior players you can think of. Chappell took on Sourav Ganguly, Harbhajan Singh, Virender Sehwag and of course, Tendulkar. As the story goes, Chappell wanted him to bat down the order during his time as India coach and at one instance, firmly asked Sehwag and Tendulkar to up their game to which Dravid said, “Nobody has ever spoken to them like that before.”

Either way, the issue was not that. The issue was the batting lineup.

“Sehwag didn’t seem very keen. So we sat down with Sachin who in any case was the first priority. We put it down to him and he seemed reluctant. He thought top-of-the-order was the best place for him as it has always been. But we were still in the discussion as Rahul and myself were convinced no other batsman in the team would be able to do it. Sachin finally agreed. Next day he got back to Rahul. Though he made it known that he was not happy doing it. He felt that his reputation demanded two places higher in the order,” Chappel is quoted in this 2011 report on rediff.com .

“If the coach has questioned our attitude, it hurts us most. No coach had mentioned even in passing that my attitude was not correct,” Tendulkar said after Chappell questioned the senior players’ commitment and attitude. This resulted in Chappell resigning on the same day.

Match-fixing/IPL spot-fixing - “Sachin should be questioned . He knows everything .”

The above quote is from a Rashis Latif interview when the match-fixing scandal broke out in 2000. While Mohammad Azharuddin and Ajay Jadeja got embroiled in the whole saga, Tendulkar stood in silence and watched. The criticism came less for why he didn’t speak — it came more for why he didn’t speak sooner.

Sachin eventually broke his silence in an interview with news weekly:

“I have always been out of this kind of thing. The nation knows I am clean. My whole career has been transparent. I don’t have to go out and say anything in my defence. The only reason I did not speak about it is that I didn’t know anything about it. I would have given a statement if I knew something. So how can I say who is telling the truth and who is not?”

Tendulkar also denied Latif’s claim: “It’s not true. And it’s not necessary that I have to react to any person’s statements”.

It was the same during the spot-fixing scandal in the IPL. He spoke, but according to many, a tad too late:

“It has always hurt me when the game of cricket is in the news for the wrong reasons. The developments in the last two weeks have been shocking and disappointing.”

Ferrari tax evasion and eventual sale

Who sells a Ferrari gifted to you by Fiat and presented by Michael Schumacher after equalling Don Bradman’s 29 centuries? Well, Sachin does.

The Ferrari-360 Modeno quickly became a matter of national interest (as everything Sachin does) after he sought an exemption on the stipulated 120 percent import duty.

The amount — Rs 1.13 crore — was waived but that didn’t stop the Delhi Court from serving notices on both Tendulkar and the Union finance and sports ministries. With the issue getting out of hand, Fiat India agreed to pay the import duty.

The nail in the coffin however was Tendulkar selling the Ferrari. After working so hard to avoid paying duty on it, he sold it to a Surat-based businessman.

“When Sachin got his Ferrari as a ‘gift’, he wanted duty & excise exemption; now that he has sold it will he ask for capital gains exemption?” wrote Tushar Gandhi, great-greatgrandson of Mahatma Gandhi on Twitter.

194* and declared

Sachin was aiming for a double-century when Rahul Dravid decided to declare the innings in a Test match against Pakistan in Multan in 2004. This sparked quite a controversy in the dressing room, with coach John Wright later admitting that Tendulkar felt ’let down’ by the decision.

“I needed only another three or four overs at the most to get to 200,” he said. “We’d discussed the declaration at tea, but I didn’t know it was round the corner. It was surprising,” said Tendulkar.

While the inner workings after the incident are not known, Dravid later said that it was the wrong decision on his part. While Tendulkar has always given his all for the team, his quotes were fodder for critics who believe he always played for himself.

Monkeygate

This is probably one incident that Tendulkar will look back and regret. Harbhajan Singh got embroiled in a racial controversy with Andrew Symonds, with the Aussies claiming that their teammate was called a ‘monkey’ by the offspinner.

Tendulkar’s initial testimony was that he didn’t hear anything, which he later changed — saying he heard a heated exchange between Singh and Symonds but did not hear the word ‘monkey’ or ‘big monkey’. He did, however hear Harbhajan say ‘teri ma ki’. Tendulkar said it’s a term that sounds like ‘monkey’ and could be misinterpreted for ‘monkey’.

Adam Gilchrist and Ricky Ponting have openly criticised Tendulkar’s actions and this is one time when he came under some fire even in the international press.