Watch: At Old Trafford in 1990, Sachin Tendulkar helped India save a Test match with his maiden international hundred.
By the time he was picked for the Pakistan tour of 1989/90, Sachin Tendulkar had already been a talking subject in the Indian cricket fraternity. The staggering numbers in school cricket and the early domestic hundreds had made the selectors notice.
India made only 15 on Test debut, in Karachi, but got 59 in his second, in Faisalabad. The 57 after being hit on the face in his fourth Test match, at Sialkot, is part of the Tendulkar folklore.
But the hundred remained elusive. Fans back home tuned in to shortwave radio sets when he resumed the fourth day of the Napier Test match on 80. Two boundaries into the morning, he hit Danny Morrison to John Wright.
“Why on earth did I play that shot when I was just twelve runs short? By the time I reached the boundary rope, tears were flowing down my cheeks,” he reminisced in his autobiography.
Tendulkar returned from New Zealand without a Test hundred. By the time the England tour began, he had missed the opportunity of being the youngest Test centurion in history.
That record rested with Mushtaq Mohammad (17 years 78 days) until 2001, until Mohammad Ashraful beat Mushtaq by 17 days.
The first Test match at Lord’s produced six hundreds, two of them by Graham Gooch. Tendulkar, however, made 10 and 27. At Old Trafford, England had three more hundreds (including another from Gooch) as they piled 519.
Mohammad Azharuddin’s 179 took India to 432. Having run out of partners, Tendulkar was last out, slogging to deep mid-wicket for 68. This time Allan Lamb got a hundred, and England set India 408 in 92 overs.
Tendulkar walked out at 109-4. There was an early alarm when he hit one back to Eddie Hemmings, but the catch was grassed. Hemmings took out Azharuddin and Kapil Dev to reduce India to 183-6.
India needed to bat for two and a half hours, but Tendulkar continued to play his shots (“getting ultra-defensive would allow the English bowlers to put more and more fielders round the bat”) as Manoj Prabhakar held one end up.
Tendulkar went past his 88 at Napier. There was a second alarm in the mid-nineties when he ducked against Angus Fraser with the bat held above his head “like a periscope”. The ball hit the bat and went to fine leg.
The hundred came with a push past mid off, off Fraser. The three took Tendulkar to 101. Acknowledging the applause was not easy for the teenager: “I had never been in that position before and was acutely embarrassed about raising my bat to the stadium.”
Tendulkar remained unbeaten on 119 – off 189 balls – and Prabhakar on 64 as India finished on 343-6. The Test match had been saved, but not Tendulkar’s day, for now he had to – much to his horror – attend the press conference.
There was also the Player of the Match award, a magnum of champagne – out of bounds for the underage Tendulkar. He stowed it away until 1998, when daughter Sara turned one.
