Motivation Quote by Sachin Tendulkar

It reads less like swagger and more like a manifesto for a certain kind of cricket genius: the batter as lone auteur. Tendulkar is explaining why he never used a runner (the substitute who runs between wickets for an injured batter), but the real point is about control. Running isn’t an afterthought; it’s the second half of the shot. In his telling, the moment of contact already contains the next decision: where the ball will land, how fast it will arrive, how quickly the fielder will release it back, whether the second run is there or a trap. A runner, no matter how fit, is operating on delayed information.

The subtext is sharp: cricket romanticizes “team game” rhetoric, yet elite batting can be brutally private. Tendulkar frames batting as a closed loop between mind and body, an internal algorithm refined over decades. Outsourcing even a small part breaks the rhythm and, crucially, breaks accountability. If you get run out with a runner, blame becomes shareable; Tendulkar rejects that ambiguity. He’d rather be limited and fully responsible than optimized and partially dependent.

Context matters, too. Runners were controversial in his era, used by stars coping with injury and sometimes accused of gaining an advantage. Tendulkar’s stance signals a moral preference for self-reliance, but also a tactical one: his game was built on precision, timing, and situational reading. The line lands because it demystifies “talent” into an almost clinical claim: I know the future one fraction of a second earlier than anyone else. That fraction is the difference between a single and a career-defining mistake.