Over the next two decades, it was the bowlers who bled runs as Tendulkar married his nearly-impregnable defence with a breathtaking array of shots. The curly-haired wunderkind with a sing-song voice made his India debut in 1989 on the tour of Pakistan, where Waqar Younis left the then 16-year-old with a bloodied nose in the Sialkot test. Obsessed with batting, Tendulkar would get a friend to bowl at him with a soaked rubber ball, so the wet marks would confirm whether he was middling them. Tendulkar took the advice to heart and found a mentor in Ramakant Achrekar, who shaped several test careers in Mumbai.Īchrekar would make Tendulkar sit behind him on his rickety scooter and crisscross Mumbai to get him to bat in up to four matches a day. He asked the youngster, then a school student, to work on his batting instead. The Australian pace great refused to entertain Tendulkar's dream of becoming a fast bowler at a Chennai academy. It was quite an incredible cricketing journey that began with a rejection by Dennis Lillee. The unprecedented century of centuries included the first double hundred in the history of men's one-day internationals. The 34,000-plus international runs that Tendulkar amassed, including a record 100 centuries, speak as much of his hunger for runs as for his ability to handle pressure.
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