'Teri aaj waat lagne wali hai' - Sachin Tendulkar recalls how his teammates frightened him ahead of his first press-conference

On 14 August 1990, a batting prodigy from Mumbai- Sachin Tendulkar- went on to become the third-youngest [17 years and 112 days] batsman to score a Test hundred against England at the Old Trafford. He went on to score another 50 of those in the longest format of the game besides racking a further 99 International tons, and break almost every batting record that is there in the record book.

And, it wasn’t really a surprise! Right from the day that he made his Test match debut against Pakistan in November 1989, it was pretty much inevitable! He had narrowly missed out on what would have been a masterly hundred earlier that year [1990] against New Zealand. But, there was no stopping Tendulkar on the 14th of August 1990 as the teenage batting sensation showed immense maturity beyond his years to score not only his first International hundred but also a ton that would help India to save the Test match.

Naturally, Tendulkar was the ‘Player of the Match’ and had to go to the post-match press conference to address the media. With him, all of 17 years old who has never faced a room full of English reporters, Tendulkar was naturally very tensed. And, his misery was even more compounded when his fellow teammates made him nervous ahead of the presser, the Master Blaster revealed in interaction with India Today.

“Yeah (I remember that). It was in Old Trafford. And everyone had scared me in the dressing room. Because I had not faced foreign media and post-match interviews. So everyone scared me in the dressing room, “Teri aaj waat lagne wali hai (you’ll be in deep trouble today), they are gonna ask you all sorts of questions.

“And that time Mr. Madhav Mantri was our manager, so he said, “don’t worry”. He put his arm around me and said, “I am going to be around, you just have to talk about the match and talk,” Sachin Tendulkar was quoted as saying by India Today.

August 14th- End of the Don, the start of the Sachin Tendulkar era

Coming back to that masterly knock that was laced with sumptuous straight drives and swashbuckling cuts and hook shots, it was an innings that India desperately needed. After having set a target of 408 in the fourth innings, England were looking prime to take a 2-0 lead in the series, after having got rid of Sidhu [0], Ravi Shastri [12], Sanjay Manjrekar [50] Dilip Vengsarkar [32], and Mohammad Azharuddin, who fell after hitting two boundaries off Eddy Hemmings. 

At 183/6, India needed someone to stand up the challenge, and the 17-year-old Tendulkar was more than up for it, as he stroked a nonchalant 119 not-out and along with Manoj Prabhakar [67*] took the visitors to safety.

Watch the video here