Kolkata: Are you Sachin Tendulkar’s biggest fan? Do you remember his first international ton? Well to remind you, let’s take a flight back to 1990 at Old Trafford in Manchester. Aged just 17 years and 112 days, Tendulkar scored his maiden century — a brilliant unbeaten 119 off 189 balls to save India the Test match against a fiery English attack. The world witnessed the arrival of one of greatest who went on to rule for the next 20 years.
“I scored that 100 on August 14 and the next day was our Independence Day, so it was special,” Tendulkar told PTI. “That hundred at least kept the series alive till next Test at the Oval. The art of saving a Test match was a new experience for me.”
That was just the beginning as the ‘Master Blaster’ went on to score 99 more international centuries – 50 more in Tests and 49 in ODIs. Besides the Mumbaikar is also the highest run-getter in Tests till now with 15921 runs.
The 47-year-old elaborated on the challenges of facing the England attack. “Chris Lewis bowled sharp inswing and throughout my career, backfoot cover drive had been my favourite shot,” he said. “The bowler who was the best by far in that series was Angus Fraser. He had a beautiful late outswing, high-arm action, so the would bounce and move so late that you had to play at it.”
“It was a case of showing patience and credit to Manoj (Prabhakar) that we had a 160-run stand,” he added. “No way till the last (did we think we were safe in the match). We came together when we were six down but me and Manoj together said ‘yeh hum kar sakte hein, match bacha lenge'( we can do it, we can save the match).”
“Well I was 17 and the man of the match was presented with a bottle of champagne. Neither did I drink and also I hadn’t reached the legal age of drinking,” he said. “My senior teammates would tell me ‘what would you do with it’. Sanjay Manjrekar presented me a white shirt which was a gift for scoring a hundred. I was really touched.”
