In late December 2012, India were at one of their lowest ebbs of Test cricket. The Indian national cricket team suffered their first series loss on home soil to England since 1984, losing the four-match series 2-1, despite taking a 1-0 lead after the first Test at Ahmedabad.
With the invincibility of the home turf shattered, the Indian selectors had to take a tough call and former BCCI Chief Selector Sandeep Patil has opened up about one conversation which caused a tectonic shift in Indian cricket.
Speaking in an interview with Vickey Lalwani, Patil threw light on the conversation with Sachin Tendulkar that led to the retirement of the Indian legend 24 years after he made his debut as a fresh-faced 16-year-old prodigy in a Test against Pakistan in Karachi in 1989.
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The series loss to England in late 2012 was the final straw that broke the proverbial camel's back, as the Indian selection committee began to “plan for the future”.
Patil revealed how within that climate, the most important meeting in Indian cricket didn't take place in a boardroom at the BCCI headquarters, rather it happened inside a quiet hotel suite in Nagpur.
The Series Result That Triggered The Conversation
In 2012, Teldulkar was at one of the toughest phases of his career. He averaged 26.88 across formats in 2012, significantly below his overall career average of 48.52. In Tests that year, he averaged 23.80, less than half of his career mark of 53.78.
In the series against England, Tendulkar could only manage scores 13, 8, 8, 76, 5 and 2, finishing with just 112 runs from four Tests.
It was this form of Tendulkar, along with the team's woes that led to Patil, who was the chairman of the BCCI selection committee at the time, arranging a special meeting to ask a ‘question' that would shock the Master Blaster.
The Nagpur Meeting
Rubbishing the rumour that the selection committee issued an ultimatum to Tendulkar to retire, Patil said, “Very wrong! Selectors or BCCI don't have the right to say that your time is over, you retire.”
Patil then went on to reveal that he and fellow selector Rajendra Singh Hans had to seek special permission from the Anti-Corruption Unit to meet Tendulkar privately in his hotel room.
“It was late 2012, Me and my fellow selector, Rajendra Singh Hans, and I decided we had to speak to him. We actually had to go to the ACU (Anti-Corruption Unit) and the manager just to seek formal permission to meet him in his room. We got the permission and invited him to sit with us”
“I asked him as a chairman of selection - What are your plans?” The response, Patil said, was immediate from Tendulkar who replied with one word, “Why?”
For Tendulkar, the question itself would've come as a shock. After more than two decades at the pinnacle of the sport, he had rarely been asked to justify his place in the side.
Patil explained to him that the selection committee believed it was time to begin planning for the future.
When pressed for details on how Tendulkar received the news, Patil said “He was shocked, and rightfully so, but we told him that the committee felt the team needed to look ahead.”
Later that evening, Tendulkar called Patil back with a stunned question, “Are you serious?” to which Patil's reply was brief and unequivocal, “Yes, we are serious.”
Patil again went on to stress that the selection committee did not have the power to force a player into retiring. He revealed that Tendulkar later himself informed him that he had decided to retire.
Notably, Tendulkar announced his ODI retirement soon after this meeting on Dec. 23, 2012. He finished as the format's highest run-scorer with 18,426 runs, 49 centuries, and 96 fifties. His final ODI was against Pakistan in March 2012, where he scored a brisk 52.
Tendulkar would continue playing Test cricket for another year before announcing his retirement in 2013. His final match was the 200th Test of his career, played against West Indies at his home ground, the Wankhede Stadium. He scored a fluent 74 in his final innings in international cricket.
To the public, it appeared as the perfect farewell. However, the process that led to that moment had begun quietly months earlier, inside a hotel room in Nagpur, with one uncomfortable question.
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