Former batting maestro Sachin Tendulkar made his debut way back in 1989 as a 16-year-old. Back then, the use of technology in sport was next to nil in sports, at least in India. Now, things are totally different. In a recent interview with Indian Express, Tendulkar recalled his first reaction on seeing a laptop in the Indian dressing room in 2002 for the first time. Not initially, but there was acceptance of technology as time passed, Tendulkar confessed.
“Technology has changed everything. In 2002, a laptop was brought to the dressing room and I said, ‘laptop kya karega dressing room mein? (What will a laptop do in the dressing room?)’. Over a period of time, there was acceptance. Only if there is acceptance, will there be adaptability. Our team meetings started to be more precise,” Tendulkar said.
Things were not left to the imagination like in the past, Tendulkar reveals how things changed once technology took over. Tendulkar also pointed out that with technology things became simpler and it helped in more ways than one.
“It was not left to individual imaginations. So, the meetings were not like earlier, where we used to say “yaad hai na Melbourne mein outswing pe out kiya tha (remember back then at Melbourne, how we got them out)”. And after saying that, no one knew who was thinking about that Melbourne day and how we got the batsmen out. Now, we had data on the screen where you could pinpoint and say where the foot of the batsman was. We knew the number of times a particular batsman has been out in a similar fashion,” Tendulkar added.
With most runs and centuries in international cricket, Tendulkar is arguably the greatest ever batsman. His record still stands years after his retirement.
