Mumbai: Sachin Tendulkar gave up the captaincy of the Indian cricket team as the pressures of leading the side was "affecting him as a person" and he was unable to "switch over" even when he was with his family.
"It (captaincy) had started affecting me as a person. And every defeat that I faced or experienced, it really hurt me. Off the field also, when I was back with my family, I couldn't switch over as I would be constantly thinking about it," Tendulkar told journalists on the occasion of the release of his autobiography 'Playing It My Way'.
"It started disturbing me and affecting me personally. So I felt that if I could contribute as a player and give all the suggestions to the next captain", he said.
Asked about the reasons for his relative failure as skipper when compared to his astounding success as a batsman, Tendulkar said one has to go back and see the scoreboards for the reason.
"I have never believed in criticising the players I have played with. It's wrong. If you go back and look at the scoreboard that itself would give a lot of explanations. Basically, we were not able to pick up 20 wickets and neither were we able to put up big totals.
"When we played in India, we beat South Africa, we beat Australia, so we had that success but I thought South Africa, Australia and West Indies and on occasions, there were matches which I thought we should have won. It was a big disappointment that we were not able to turn that in our favour.
"I always believe that you are going to have good games and you are going to have bad games but the good games you got to make sure you finish well, the good games should not be 80 percent or 90 percent and then the last 10 percent someone comes and takes the game away from you.
"That happened on a few occasions which sort of either builds good momentum or takes the momentum away from you. So that is what had happened.
