Playing It My Way: My Autobiography

I am a big fan of Tendulkar as are a billion indians! The man is uncontroversial and takes great pains to stay away from revealing anything that is not already publicly known in about 450 pages of dense text. Other than the first 30-40 pages describing his childhood and the events leading to his wedding with Anjali, there is nothing of note here. For example he steers completely clear of the most infamous match fixing scandal involving a former Indian Captain devoting 2-3 lines to it. Nor does he say anything about the falling out with his once schoolmate, Vinod Kambli. The book reads like a chronological account of 24 years of Indian cricket, match by match, series by series interspersed with his own fights with injury (he took over a 100 injections in his career!). The only juicy pieces are what transpired after Dravid declared in Pakistan with Sachin stranded at 194 not out - Sanjay Manjrekar gets a lashing in one paragraph; and the extreme criticism of the Chappell brothers. If a devotee of Sachin's like me was disappointed, that tells you volumes about the book.

The book is fairly detailed about a lot of matches and happenings around those. 80% of the book is about the matches played.
The book covers a few personal aspects, details quite a bit about his injuries.

What the book shies away from?
I was hoping he would have go into detail about his adversaries as well as teammates.
What's his dream team?
The match fixing controversy and what he thought about it?
Whether Vinod Kambli could have done better?
How do we improve cricket in india?
Can the selection process be bettered?

The book shies away from controversy, and is pretty tame. I say this since Sachin is the cricketer who has played the most cricket and should have some incisive views about the sport and the people in it.

I'm sure all Sachin fans will buy and read this book nevertheless. I would place this at mediocre, but a good read nevertheless.

Great

Loved the book. Got it some 3 years back. It’s always great to see the world of cricket through the eyes of a cricketer. And when it is the God himself then it is even better. Talks extensively about his cricket, strategies and mindset. A must read for all avid cricket fans.

I do not have to give the introduction to the book or the person. So I would say about the material of the book and packaging. It was just perfect and I did not see any issue. Even though I had already read the book I just wanted to buy it to keep it on my small self and I am just happy to have it. Delivery was perfect right on time.

It seems like it was penned by Tendulkar himself as the prose is not overtly literary nor does it pretend to be. Writing was never Sachin's claim to fame. I liked the book as it serves as walk down memory lane.

Bought it as Xmas gift for Hubby, he loved it!

Poor print quality. Some pages were incorrectly printed.

Thumbs Up

nice read