7 moments from Sachin Tendulkar’s career that don’t fade away

5) The Sydney surprise

Sachin Tendulkar at his impeccable best against Australia at the SCG

In the 2003/04 Border-Gavaskar Test series in Australia, India entered the 4th Test in Sydney level with Australia on 1-1, having lost the series lead that they had gained in Adelaide. In an extremely rare scenario, Tendulkar arrived at the venue having scored just 82 runs from five innings.

There was an obvious slump, but Tendulkar had to spoil Steve Waugh’s farewell party and chose to come out of it at Sydney in zen-like fashion.

Tendulkar came in to bat in the first session of Day One and remained unconquered for over ten hours, negotiating over four hundred deliveries for an unbeaten 241.

The magic of that innings was the discipline he showed in dealing with his shortcomings in that tour – the outside off delivery that got him out driving. A self-imposed restriction on stroke play saw the genius not play a single off-side stroke for the entirety of his innings, scoring only when the ball was on the stumps or on his pads.

It was yet another lesson from the Sachin textbook of cricket that showed how to deal difficulties with discipline and patience.

“I had got out a couple of times to balls bowled outside the off stump. So I decided not to play the cover-drive. They were bowling consistently outside the off stump, and I decided to leave all those balls. Then they had to bowl to me and I used the pace of the ball. I would put this innings right at the top of my hundreds. I had a plan and I am happy I could execute it well. I am happy that I was able to maintain the discipline throughout the innings. Things had gone wrong a couple of times with my shot selection, and I knew I had to cut out a few strokes,” Tendulkar recalled later.

Not before having reaffirmed to the world his title of ‘modern day Bradman’.