Indians leave everything so late: Warne blames Sachin for US exhibition matches fiasco

Former leg-spinner Shane Warne has blamed Sachin Tendulkar for the failure of the US exhibition matches which was a joint collaboration between the two cricketers. Warne revealed that Tendulkar wanted his people to run the event but they weren’t able to handle it and this eventually led to breakdown of communication between the two cricketers resulting in scraping the concept altogether.

Warne narrates the entire episode in his autobiography

The leg-spinner  has given a detailed account of this saga in his autobiography. He wrote that Tendulkar had this guy there, Sanjay, who was very much a mentor and business adviser. Warne explained his concept and gave them a slide show.

According to the spinner they loved it and flew in a guy called Ben Sturner from America but Sachin was adamant that his team of people run the whole thing.

To this Warne replied that it is his idea and he knows he can get the best players and he is prepared to go 50-50 with Sachin. He also suggested that they pay experienced people to organise it and appoint two from each of our camps.

But Sachin was adamant that he has to have Sanjay and Ben and Warne admits that he was uneasy with that but remained sure Sachin and he together would make it work, so he agreed.

Warne regrets giving opportunity to Sachin’s team

Warne noted that he felt Sachin has managed his life so well for 25 years so he should relax and let Sachin take care of everything but Warne later  regretted this decision.

He wrote that the organisation was not as it could, or should, have been, which was a real shame. They were decent guys but the event got too big for them.

Warne unimpressed by management of Sachin’s team

He explained that Sachin’s team didn’t do the pitch/ground deal quite right and fell foul of that old line of the devil being in the detail of the contract. This, along with other small and important aspect of a top level event was all very last minute and not slick as he had wanted.

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He thinks it is because Indians leave everything so late, which they can make work at home, but he points out that it is not easy to pull off in someone else’s country. Each day he felt like they were flying by the seat of their pants and he didn’t like that at all.