Shane Warne reveals his first impression of Sachin Tendulkar

There are different stories involving Sachin Tendulkar and Shane Warne, the most famous being how the Indian maestro clubbed him after dancing down on rough surfaces, giving Warnie the ‘nightmares’. Now Shane Warne has revealed his first impression of a 21 year-old Sachin when he traveled to Australia for a Test series in the early 90s.

During the third Test at Sydney Cricket Ground Warne bowled to Sachin for the first time where the Master Blaster scored a match-saving 148, stunning the world. Two Tests later, Sachin scored his second century of the series on a bouncy Perth track. Sachin was all of 21 when he scored those twin tons, but according to Warne, he looked a lot younger.

“When I first saw Sachin Tendulkar in the first Test, he was 21. But looked about 10. I thought this guy was pretty special. He’s smacking us all over the park and he’s 10 years of age. You can tell when players come out and it’s the time they’ve got. That’s the class about them. You can tell that about good players... the time, elegance... it all looks easy,” Warne while commentating on Sky Sports during the second Test between England and Pakistan.

Warne also revealed how after the first impression he realized Sachin had all the ingredients to be a quality batsman at the highest level. “The good players, if they get a good ball to score off, they don’t hit the fielder, they find the gaps, hit it to the boundary and that puts pressure back on the bowler,” Warne added.

“That means as a batsman, you can get more bad balls. If you’re just looking to survive and you haven’t got that intent as a batsman as a bowler you feel like you can bowl wherever you want and the batsman is not going to hurt you,” he concluded.