Sachin Tendulkar Sealed All His Weaknesses In The 1990 England Tour: Sanjay Manjrekar

Sachin Tendulkar had sealed all his weakness and had become a complete cricketer during the 1990 tour of England, feels former middle-order batsman-turned commentator Sanjay Manjrekar.

Sachin Tendulkar made his debut as a 16-year-old prodigy during the 1989 tour of Pakistan. The ‘Little Genius’ scored two brilliant half-centuries during that series but the general consensus was, and Tendulkar has himself admitted that on multiple platforms, that he was trying to play a lot of strokes and not respecting the bowlers enough in his initial few innings.

”Those signs were there. It wasn’t that we were astounded by the effort. Because this is a guy whose climb at the international level from the age of 16, who started playing in Pakistan with a few good innings there but there was a certain amount of looseness, impetuous kind of batting outside the off-stump,” Manjrekar said in the latest episode of Star Sports’ chat show Cricket Connected.

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‘But come England he had sealed all his weaknesses’- Sanjay Manjrekar on Sachin Tendulkar

Tendulkar then toured New Zealand where he narrowly missed out on becoming the youngest-ever batsman to score a Test hundred when he was dismissed on a brilliant 88 at Napier. Here too, Tendulkar’s exuberance of youth took over and he ended up throwing away his wicket. But six months later, Sachin was transformed, batsman. He had tightened his game to a significant extent and the results were truly visible when he scored his maiden Test ton in Manchester to help India save the Test match.

The 17-year-old prodigy showed experience and calmness beyond his years and stiched match-saving 160-run-stand with Manoj Prabhakar.

”In New Zealand, he had one 80 and he had become a little tighter. But come England, he had sealed all his weaknesses. So that hundred was just a recognition of the growth of this man and I have never seen anyone come to international cricket so quickly,” Manjrekar added

Manjrekar also talked about Tendulkar’s brilliant hundreds in Australia- 148 in Sydney and 114 in Perth- during the 1992 tour.

”And then in Australia immediately after England, he went there and dominated international cricket as a batsman,” he said.

Sachin Tendulkar went on to add 99 more hundreds to his kitty post that Old Trafford hundred and true to his billing, dominated the game for the next couple of decades before finally calling it a day in 2013.

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