Sachin Tendulkar’s cherubic 16-year-old face is a snapshot from India’s last tour to Pakistan. You’ve heard the tales since — Tendulkar wearing lipstick (for fancy-dress parties) and Sanjay Manjrekar playing big brother to the schoolboy debutant. What were other members of this India team doing 12 years ago? We offer a glimpse of what might have been.ZAHEER KHAN Eyebrows probably thinner, the speedster from Ahmednagar was a 12-year-old budding schoolboy cricketer back then. Watching on TV as Manoj Prabhakar and Kapil Dev led the Indian bowling attack.watching and wishingPARTHIV PATELHe had more immediate problems to take care of.e.g., whom to beat to pulp in lower KG? All of five, Patel was probably as perky then as he is appealing for leg befores todayIRFAN PATHANHis father never had an inkling of things to come when he saw his six-year-old son bring down mangoes with mean left-handed throws from the neighbourbood mango tree in Mandvi, Vadodara. To make the yorkers flow with the same accuracy now, should Pathan draw little mangoes on the pitch?RAHUL DRAVIDThe wall was being built, brick by brick. As a 17-year-old student of St Joseph’s college, Bangalore, the suave youngster was already a Ranji Trophy bat for Karnataka. One for the future, they said.VIRENDER SEHWAG He found his teenage role model on television that year — when he watched Sachin pulverise spin wizard Abdul Qadir in Pakistan. The 12-year-old spent all his time whacking a ball hung from an old smelly sock tied to their courtyard in Najafgarh. Needless to say, Sehwag ki maa never had too much trouble since.TAILPIECEBlame it on the smog in Calcutta. The crystal ball gets all hazy when it comes to Saurav Ganguly. Myriad images float — of an 18 year-old playing football, a teenager sweet-talking his pretty neighbour and left-hander practising cover drives at the Bengal nets.
