Sachin Tendulkar – THE GHOST of Lord Hawke failed to rise from the grave. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse apparently felt it inappropriate to arrive as messengers of divine retribution. Instead, Headingley’s heretics were free to welcome a small, sleek Indian with a penchant for centuries and silk culottes.
Adoption formalities involving Sachin Tendulkar were completed with a minimum of fuss. They didn’t exactly shower rose petals at his feet at 11.82 yesterday morning when smiling bashfully, he led his new Yorkshire teammates down Headingley’s 20 pavilion steps. A 10-second burst of polite applause, which allowed Tendulkar to mouth a solitary “thank you”, was deemed sufficient.
They don’t get carried away with historic occasions in the land of Geoffrey Boycott and Joshua Tetley. Both, incidentally, stand to benefit from Yorkshire’s employment of the Bombay teenager, whose entry into county cricket marked the end of the 19th century on calendars from Bradford to Batley.
Boycott has been a conspicuous advocate of change on the Yorkshire committee, He gladly posed for photographs with Tendulkar, a tee-totaller who doubled as a billboard for Mr. Tetley’s bitter, and Tendulkar then proceeded to claim two Kent wickets in three deliveries with his unheralded medium-paced bowling.
However the more widely anticipated treat comes tomorrow when weather permitting, he will begin the process of convincing domestic cricket’s most demanding audience that he is a batting legend in the making. Sachin Tendulkar was run out for 7 and York’s lost by 70 runs. He scored 1,070 runs in the County Championship, averaging 46.52.
