Former India captain Sourav Ganguly has revealed how cricket icon Sachin Tendulkar used to always stay at the non-striker’s end when the first ball was bowled in a match.
Ganguly and Tendulkar formed one of the most potent opening combinations in the world and till date, they hold the record for the most number of runs scored at the top of the order. Between 1996 to 2007, the duo scored 6,609 runs in 136 innings, including 21-century stands and 23 fifty partnerships in the 50-over format of the game.
India’s current Test opener Mayank Agarwal recently asked Ganguly about the supposed myth that Tendulkar always forced the southpaw to take a strike on the first delivery and the current BCCI President revealed that it was indeed the case.
“Did Sachin paaji force you to take the strike when you opened the batting in ODIs?,” Agarwal asked Ganguly while speaking on the series ‘Open Nets with Mayank’ hosted by bcci.tv.
“Always, he did…he had an answer to that. I used to tell him ‘sometimes you should also face the first ball. I always face the first ball’. He had two answers for that,” Ganguly said.
“One, he believed if his form was good, he should continue and remain at the non-striker’s end. And when his form wasn’t good, he would say ‘I should remain at the non-striker’s end, as it takes the pressure off me’. He had an answer for both good form and bad form,” the former India captain said, leaving Agarwal in splits.
Ganguly then went on to reveal that he also came up with a trick to make Tendulkar face the first ball, which according to him, worked like a charm a few times.
“Until and unless some days you just walk past him and stand at the non-striker’s end and he was already on TV, and he would be forced to be at the striker’s end. That has happened once or twice, I went past him and stood at the non-striker’s end,” Ganguly said.
