What Goughie said about Sachin

Darren Gough makes a post-game living as a presenter on a superbly low-end sports radio station, co-hosting the drivetime programme every evening.

It's a show that has a single tactic. Goughie or his buddy jock, a journalist called Adrian, take a position on one of the day's sports stories, and the other starts arguing with him about it until they come up with something provocative enough to cause a listener to ring in, and then all three start arguing about it. Within a couple of minutes, it's forgotten and they're off on something else.

They have a feature called 'any other business' where each gets 30 seconds to talk about a subject nominated by the other. On the first day of the game in Mumbai, Goughie was asked, 'what's Sachin Tendulkar like'.

'Known him since he was 18 and he came to Yorkshire,' he replied. 'Great lad, very quiet but loved a practical joke. He asked me to his wedding, but I couldn't go. He used to like a Bailey's with ice at night time. Before he went in he used to dip his hands in water, and then put his inners on. He had a little artifact, I dunno if it was something to do with his religion, that he would put under the rubber of his bat.'

Sometimes the first, throwaway things that come to mind are the most interesting. Many thousands of words had been written about Sachin on that day, but I didn't read Goughie's anywhere else.