Former Australia leg-spinner Shane Warne recalled watching Sachin Tendulkar for the first time during India’s tour of Australia in 1991-92. It was during the third of the series at the Sydney Cricket Ground that Warne bowled to Tendulkar for the first time in his career and even after all these years, he remembers it for a reason because Tendulkar had scored a masterful unbeaten 148 in the match, helping India to a draw.
Tendulkar went on to score his second century of the series two Tests later on the bouncy surface at Perth. He was 21 when at the time of scoring these brilliant twin centuries against Australia with Warne revealing how the batsman looked a lot younger, and hence, Australia were baffled to see a player of Tendulkar’s age scoring runs against them so effectively.
Also Read | Warne on how to get the best out of James Anderson
“When I first saw Sachin Tendulkar in the first Test, he was 21. But looked about 10. I thought this guy was pretty special. He’s smacking us all over the park and he’s 10 years of age. You can tell when players come out and it’s the time they’ve got. That’s the class about them. You can tell that about good players… the time, elegance… it all looks easy,” Warne said during commentary on Sky Sports during the second Test between England and Pakistan.
Warne knew how good a player Tendulkar was going to be because the batsman fit every criteria of the leg-spinner’s definition of a great batsman. “The good players, if they get a good ball to score off, they don’t hit the fielder, they find the gaps, hit it to the boundary and that puts pressure back on the bowler,” Warne added.
“That means as a batsman, you can get more bad balls. If you’re just looking to surive and you haven’t got that intent as a batsman as a bowler you feel like you can bowl wherever you want and the batsman is not going to hurt you.”