ARRIVAL OF AN INDIAN...

challenge which Waqar and Malcolm posed. Achrekar would make his young trainees practice and play matches on used pitches with uneven bounce at Mumbai’s Shivaji Park.

“In fact, (during fielding practice) I would just throw the ball up and take it on my body to absorb the pain,” Tendulkar would recall.

In his book ,Playing it May

Way ,Tendulkar also speaks of the early anxiety after facing the fiery Imran Khan, Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis.

“It was baptism by fire. So much so that after my very first innings in Test cricket, during which I was all at sea against Wasim and Waqar, I began to doubt my ability to bat and question whether I was ever going to be good enough to play at international level,” Tendulkar writes.

He would go on to face Richard Hadlee-led New Zealand pace pack in early 1990, scoring 88 to prove he was no less a talent when it came to tackling swing. And Tendulkar would simply go on to symbolise pretty much everything about Indian cricket from there.