I requested Kapil Dev, Arshad Ayub, Maninder to bowl to him: Dilip Vengsarkar recalls his first encounter with Sachin Tendulkar


I requested Kapil Dev, Arshad Ayub, Maninder to bowl to him: Dilip Vengsarkar recalls his first encounter with Sachin Tendulkar

sachin tendulkar

Tendulkar’s numbers reflect why he is regarded as the ‘God of Cricket’. The India batting legend has started his international cricket career at the age of 16 and has scored 15,921 runs in 200 Tests at the average of 53.8 and in 463 ODIs, he scored 18,426 runs at the average of 44.8 with 49 centuries.

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Former India skipper Dilip Vengsarkar recalls his first meeting with 15-year-old Tendulkar during a Test match in November 1988.

“Actually, I had heard about Sachin because he was scoring heavily inter-school matches. These tournaments are 100 years old have given a lot of cricketers for Mumbai and for India,” Vengsarkar said in a Facebook Live video interview with Sportskeeda.

“At the time I was India’s captain, and I was about to play my 100th Test match against New Zealand in Mumbai. We were practicing there. Our coach Vasudev Paranjpe was very impressed with Sachin, and he said, ‘look at this boy, he’s an exceptional talent’. I told him ‘I can look at him later, not now’. But he insisted,” the former batsman recalled.

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“So he got him on the ground, so I had to see him bat at the nets. I requested Kapil Dev, Arshad Ayub, Maninder Singh, Chetan Sharma to bowl to him. They were like ‘what is this thing like. Why should we bowl to a U-15 kid’,” Vengsarkar added.

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“So I told them he has been scoring runs in school tournaments, so we have to see him how we bats. So he batted. Hats off to those bowlers, they were established cricketers, but still, they said they will bowl for a while. But Sachin was so impressive, he played so well,” he recalled.

Furthermore, he also recalled that on the same evening, he suggested the Mumbai team selection committee to pick Tendulkar in the 15-man squad.“The same evening, we had a selection meeting to pick the Bombay team. I attended the meeting. I told them about Sachin. ‘I just saw him bat, he’s very good. So, pick him in the 15-member squad’. he said.

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“They said ‘it’s too early for him. If he gets injured, we will be blamed. So we will wait for a while’. I said you keep him in the 15-member squad so that he is around the team and can learn the atmosphere of the team’,” he recalled.

“In Duleep Trophy, he got a hundred. In Irani Trophy, he got a hundred. Then we went to Pakistan in 1989, and there came Sachin Tendulkar, and the rest is history,” Vengsarkar added.

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