So Sachin Tendulkar and Sanjay Manjrekar are having a little tiff. In and of itself, nothing surprising there. It's neither the first nor the last time that an active sportsman will fall out with a former team mate who has moved into the cushy critics' armchair. The spat is also probably not quite what it's being made out to be.
But for me, there's something a little different about this one. I've seen them together, off the field, and it's hard to imagine two cricketers being closer friends. Manjrekar, for all intents and purposes, appeared to play the elder brother role, but absent any overbearing didacticism. Watching them take throw-downs from each other on a tiled bathroom floor, and hearing of and observing the things they used to do together, one would never have imagined a public feud of any sort, however minor.
I was going to say that it just goes to show, but I'm not entirely certain what it is that is illustrated. When the best of friendships can go sour, as I'm sure most of us have felt at some points in our lives, it does make you think about all the openly frosty dressing room relationships that exist. Little wonder that on occasion, some teams have real trouble performing as a cohesive unit.
Ultimately, I guess it's all part of growing up. When I first encountered the pair, Sachin looked a little more like this picture below, and grandmothers all over England were going ga-ga over him.
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