“He was 100% right”: When Sachin Tendulkar recalled a Chennai hotel staff member giving him valuable cricket advice that actually helped him in batting
Sachin Tendulkar has received cricket advice from some of the biggest names in the sport. But one observation that made him change his equipment came from a hotel staffer he met in Chennai. The incident took place during a Test series in 2001 at the Taj Coromandel. Tendulkar later recalled that the man noticed something about his elbow guard that even he had not discussed with anyone else.“He said, whenever I’ve seen you wear an arm guard, your bat swing changes. That elbow guard restricts my bat swing. And he was 100 per cent right,” Tendulkar said in a video he shared on X in 2019.The story did not end there. Tendulkar returned to his hotel room, took out the elbow guard and redesigned it.
The advice that made Tendulkar rethink his elbow guard
Tendulkar returned to his hotel room, took out the elbow guard and redesigned it.
According to Tendulkar’s recollection, the staffer had asked him if he could discuss something about cricket. The conversation soon turned to the elbow guard. The man had noticed that Tendulkar’s swing looked different whenever he wore it. “And I don’t think I’ve spoken about this to anyone in the world. I was the only person who was aware of that,” Tendulkar recalled in the video.Tendulkar told him that he was the only person who had figured it out. “So I said, yes, you know, you are the only person in the world who’s figured out that,” he said. Instead of brushing aside the observation, Tendulkar acted on it.“But you won’t believe that, you know, after that, I actually came back to the room from the ground. I carried my elbow guard and I redesigned my elbow guard according to the correct size and the amount of padding and where the strap should be and all that. And I played,” he said.He later explained that he reopened the guard and changed its construction. “I instantly redesigned my elbow guard. I needed to re-open it and work on it, get the fibre and cushion on either side to absorb the impact,” Tendulkar said.“In our country everyone from panwala to CEOs will give you advice. But one should still be open about ideas,” he said in the video.
Sachin wanted to find the man
In 2019, Tendulkar posted the story on X and specifically asked people to help him identify the staffer. “A chance encounter can be memorable!” he wrote, recalling his meeting at the Taj Coromandel. He added that he wondered where the man was and wanted to meet him again.The appeal eventually led to his identification. According to The Hindu and various media, the man was S. Guruprasad, who was 45 at the time and living in Chennai. Guruprasad was not on Twitter. He found out about Tendulkar’s post when his nephew in France called him after seeing it. “My nephew, who saw the tweet, immediately knew it was me as I had shared the incident with him when it happened,” Guruprasad told the media.
He was actually a security guard, not a waiter
Photo credit: Indian Express
Guruprasad’s version of the encounter differed slightly from Tendulkar’s. While Tendulkar remembered him as a waiter, Guruprasad told The Hindu that he was a security guard engaged by the hotel. He said he saw Tendulkar as the cricketer was about to take a lift. Guruprasad wanted an autograph but did not have a piece of paper, so he used his security beat notebook.The notebook eventually became a prized possession. As Tendulkar was signing it, Guruprasad asked whether he could speak to him about cricket. “He seemed friendly. So, I wasn’t hesitant to ask,” Guruprasad said.He then shared his observation about the elbow guard. “I told him that his elbow guard was affecting his wrist movement and the swinging of the bat,” he said.
A cricket fan who noticed something others missed
Guruprasad was a keen cricket follower and had closely watched Tendulkar’s batting. He told the media that Tendulkar was then a key part of India’s batting line-up and that he would be disappointed whenever the batsman was dismissed. “If he got out, the batting line-up would mostly fall like a pack of cards,” Guruprasad said.Years later, Tendulkar’s decision to publicly search for the staffer came as a surprise to Guruprasad. For him, the episode showed that the batting great had remembered a brief conversation that happened more than a decade earlier.
