KOCHI: Sachin Tendulkar knows a thing or two about timing. Much in the same way that he used to beat the fine leg with sweetly timed paddle-sweeps during his playing days, the Master Blaster used the occasion of the launch of a Centre for Sports Medicine at a prominent hospital in the city to talk about the timing of a few things in his illustrious career. Having recovered from a career-threatening back injury in 1999, Tendulkar introduced the case of ‘tennis elbow’ to the common man in early 2004 when he was diagnosed with one.
“The important thing about the injury was that it happened to me at the start of a season,” said Tendulkar here on Thursday. “I ended up missing almost a full year. But had it happened to me at the end of the season when I could've undergone treatment in off season, then nobody would’ve heard of tennis elbow,” said the Bharat Ratna. His lecture on 'timing' didn’t end there as he also took the opportunity to take a dig at doctors.
“I have had a lot of injuries and there were occasions when a couple of doctors couldn’t diagnose the problem, instead they said the illness was in my head,” said the 43-year-old adding that he is “lucky to have a doctor 24 hours at home”, referring to his wife Anjali, who’s a pediatrician. “But things have changed a lot,” said Tendulkar. He launched a similar facility in Kozhikode earlier in the day.
