Sachin Tendulkar once revealed a waiter at the team hotel helped him improve his batting technique |Courtesy-BCCI
KEY HIGHLIGHTS
- Sachin Tendulkar revealed a waiter helped him improve his batting
- The incident happened at the Taj Coromandel Hotel
- Sachin scored 100 international centuries
The beauty of cricket in India is the fact that every individual has a strong opinion about the national team and their favourite cricketers. One such fan’s school of thought had a huge effect on Sachin Tendulkar and helped him change his batting technique.
The story goes down South to Chennai, where at the Taj Coromandel Hotel, the national team were staying during a Test series. Tendulkar once revealed that he was approached by a waiter, who helped him make a drastic change.
The 2011 World Cup winner had revealed the same incident during an event in 2017. Tendulkar stated that the waiter had come to serve him coffee and asked him if he was open to having a chat about the sport. The Little Master further revealed that his fan told him that his bat swing was changing while wearing an arm guard.
“If you have an open mind, you can develop so many things. In Chennai, it was a waiter who came up to me and said ‘if you don’t mind and don’t get offended I want to tell you something’. I said ‘go ahead.’ He said my elbow guard restricts my bat swing. And he was 100 per cent right.
“I knew I was feeling uncomfortable but I never thought of doing it myself. A few years down the line I got hit a couple of times on my elbow guard and it hurt. That’s when I realised that the padding on my elbow guard is inadequate,” said Tendulkar at the launch of ‘Sachin by Spartan’ Range.
“I instantly redesigned my elbow guard. I needed to re-open it and work on it, get the fibre and cushion on either side to absorb the impact. In our country, everyone from panwala to CEOs will give you advice. But one should still be open about ideas,” Tendulkar added.
A couple of years later, Tendulkar asked for help on social media to find the person and was successful in doing so.
Tendulkar is regarded as arguably the greatest cricketer to ever play the game. He is the only player to ever play 200 Test matches and also score 100 international centuries. He holds the record for playing the most Tests and ODIs in history and is the leading run-getter in both formats. No player has more Test centuries than while he is second in the list of players with most tons in the ODI format.
