Mumbai: India's retired batting maestro Sachin Tendulkar said at the release of his autobiography Wednesday that he did not witness live what he considers the proudest moment of his life — winning the Cricket World Cup in 2011.
Tendulkar said he was superstitious at the Wankhede Stadium during the final against Sri Lanka and tried to repeat what he had been doing as India beat Australia in the quarterfinals.
"Unfortunately I missed that last moment," Tendulkar said at the launch of his book "Playing it My Way" — attended by former India captains Sunil Gavaskar, Rahul Dravid and Sourav Ganguly among others.
"I was not watching it live even though I was inside the stadium. I was praying. I was a little superstitious because when we were playing Australia in Ahmedabad, I was not watching — I'd put my head down on the massage table and was being attended to by the team physio. Viru (Virender Sehwag) had been sitting next to me... So I continued that in the World Cup final."
Captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni (91 not out) hit the winning runs to seal a World Cup victory which Tendulkar said at the time was "the proudest moment of my life."
Tendulkar was the second highest run-scorer in the tournament with 482, after topping in two previous World Cups. He aggregated 673 runs when India reached the final in 2003 and 523 when India made the semifinals in 1996.
Tendulkar, who retired from international cricket last year with a record 15,921 runs and 51 centuries in 200 tests and 18,426 runs with 49 centuries in 463 one-dayers, will release his book internationally on Thursday.
