Unceremonious sacking as captain was humiliating: Sachin Tendulkar

NEW DELHI: Sharing his anger and pain after being stripped of the captaincy in 1997, batting legend Sachin Tendulkar has revealed that the "unceremonious" sacking was very "embarrassing" and "humiliating".

Writing in his autobiography ' Playing It My Way', published by Hachette India, Tendulkar recalled the drawn three-match series against Sri Lanka, which preceded his sacking.

"At the end of the series, I was unceremoniously sacked as skipper. No one from the BCCI managed to call me or inform me of my removal as captain before someone from the media called to say I was no longer captain," Tendulkar has written.

Tendulkar, 41, said the being removed from the position made him more determined to play better cricket.

"I was actually with my friends in Sahitya Sahawas. I felt extremely humiliated to hear this, but the manner in which the whole thing was handled strengthened my resolve to be a better cricketer in the years to come.

"I told myself that the BCCI mandarins might be able to take the captaincy away from me, but no one could do the same as far as my own cricket was concerned," he wrote.

Even as he vowed to do better, Tendulkar said the "sense of ignominy and the pain were still there".

"During my tenure as captain some of the players used to call me 'skip', so when one of the players shouted out 'skipper' in our next engagement in Dhaka, I automatically turned around to answer the call. That's when it really hit me that I was no longer the captain of the Indian cricket team.

"Now I simply had to focus on my batting and win some matches for the team. So that's what I did," he writes.