Vinod Kambli and Sachin Tendulkar go back a long way. The two have known each other since they were 10 years old, played cricket together for over two decades and went through many ups and downs. Tendulkar and Kambli’s friendship hit rock bottom when the latter accused his best friends of not supporting him through his lows in a staggering claim during an Indian reality show. The impact was such that Sachin and Kambli didn’t speak for a few years. In fact, when Tendulkar retired, Kambli was snubbed from his speech, and Sachin even left his childhood friend out of a post-retirement get-together.
Thankfully, the two bonded back and have been close again ever since. However, this wasn’t the first time Kambli managed to ‘upset’ Tendulkar. Amid reports of Kambli’s ill health, which surfaced after his appearance during the inauguration of Ramakant Achrekar’s memorial in Mumbai, the mind harks back to an incident that Sanjay Manjrekar once recalled about Kambli and the ‘character’ that he was. In an interaction with SportsKeeda three years ago, Manjrekar spoke about Kambli’s early years and how he would go after him and Sachin… all because he wasn’t part of India’s Playing XI.
“This story is from the 1992 World Cup when Vinod Kambli was in the Indian World Cup team. Kambli is someone you know is a character and he was very friendly with me and Sachin. In the first few matches of the World Cup, he wasn’t playing. His mood was off; he was a bit upset. Sachin and I were the two established players so we were getting all the matches. But after every match, when we would meet, he would come after us. He would criticise; ‘What is this batting? You could have played faster’. He didn’t even spare Sachin,” Manjrekar said.
“In a match against Zimbabwe, Sachin and I had a good partnership. It was a small target and we won the match. Despite that, in the evening, Kambli would again go like ‘The match and all is fine; but we could have won it a lot earlier. He told Sachin, ‘John Traicos is such an ordinary bowler. You could have hit him out of the ground; you were taking singles’. Sachin said ‘our target was to win the match’. But Vinod did not learn. If there is one person who could upset Sachin, that is Vinod Kambli.”
When Manjrekar and Tendulkar got back at Kambli
Kambli had played five ODIs for India a year before, in 1991, and had scored 23 not out against West Indies and 40 and 30 against Pakistan. Kambli played a couple of more matches in the lead-up to the World Cup. He got to bat just once but could only return 3 runs against England. Finally, Kambli made his World Cup debut for India – against Pakistan, but for all the lessons he dished out to Sachin and Manjrekar, he himself struggled to get going, scoring 24 off 41 balls. That evening, after the match, it was Tendulkar and Manjrekar’s turn to give Kambli a taste of his own medicide.
“This kept happening until Vinod finally got a chance in the India vs Pakistan match. And there is scored at a strike rate of 54 or 56. Sachin and I were looking at each other and saying ‘Let him come back’ and it’ll be out turn to get back at him. So after the match, we took Vinod in a corner and said ‘What happened? You hit such big sixes in the nets. What happened during the match?’ Then he says ‘they were bowling very tight’. That was his simple explanation. So yeah, he was quite the character,” Manjrekar said.
