First-division bowler Rohit Roy

Rohit Roy did with his very first delivery what many international bowlers dream of — beat the master. The 19-year-old right-arm medium-fast bowler from Entally had been called to bowl to Sachin Tendulkar at nets on Monday. He recounts to Metro his career’s most memorable over.

A nervous rush of energy ran through me when Sachin asked me to bowl after knocking deliveries from Ishant Sharma and Bhuvneshwar Kumar. Bowling coach Joe Dawes threw a shiny red ball at me and Sachin took guard.

Oh! God, I shouldn’t make a fool of myself! That was my first thought. After all, I was bowling to THE Tendulkar. My first ball pitched on the line of off stump and his bat came down for a front-foot drive. Missed. The ball swung a little and whizzed inches past the stump. “Well bowled,” Sachin shouted.

His compliment: my first prize!

The second was a half-volley on middle stump. He flicked it to leg and shouted: “Try to keep your deliveries consistently on off stump. If you maintain that, you will surely get a lot of wickets.”

His advice: my second prize!

I bowled 12 deliveries before R. Ashwin took over. I had bowled to Gayle and Dravid at nets but Sachin was a different ball game!

hits and misses of fandom as ‘god’ bats
Sachin Tendulkar at nets two days before the penultimate Test of his career was as good as watching a classy century for the army of fans who had turned up at the Eden Gardens on Monday to watch and worship their god of cricket. Nobody got close enough to the little master to thrust an autograph book at him, but their day was made when he responded to screams of “Sachin sir....Sachin sir” with a wave and a smile.	Yash Shah,15, came armed with a spiral notepad tied to a string that had on previous occasions fetched him autographs from the comfort of the clubhouse tier. “I lower the string till the pavilion below whenever I spot a cricketer. It always works, though the one signature missing from my diary is of Sachin Tendulkar,” said the Class X student, who was at the ground with friends Varun Bosmia and Manav Guzrati. Yash had to go back empty-handed on Monday because the guards wouldn’t let him enter the clubhouse stands. Block B, where he sat, was too far for his notepad on a string to reach Sachin.
She was up at 6am to take a bus from Kankurgachhi to Eden to watch “my God do what he does best”. Satarupa Ghosh, a 22-year-old MA student at Rabindra Bharati University, is praying Tendulkar bats on the last day of the Test starting Wednesday because she doesn’t have tickets for the first four days.	Srijata Neogi,16, jumped for joy before going click-click the moment she spotted Sachin Tendulkar warming up. “I decided to come and watch him at nets the day the papers announced that he would be playing his 199th Test at Eden,” she said. “Unlike in a match, cricketers are relaxed and natural at nets. That’s the best time to catch them,” added her uncle Sarbajit.
Tapash and Priyakshi Mondal left their Baruipur home at 7am to be seated at Eden by 9.30am, an hour before Tendulkar arrived with the rest of the team. The couple, who introduced themselves as “devotees” rather than fans, said watching Tendulkar bat a few feet away gave them the satisfaction of completing a pilgrimage.	Raj Pritam Mitra and Arghya Jana (right) came all the way from Ranaghat, only to realise they had left their passes behind. “We stuck around for over three hours. Some cops asked for Rs 100 each to help us get in but we refused,” Raj said. The duo intend to be back at the ground on Tuesday. “All we want is a glimpse of him playing from close one last time,” Arghya said.
Text by Sushovan Sircar, pictures by Bhubaneswarananda Halder