“He put me in and zipped it”: How Sachin Tendulkar once decided to put his friend inside his huge kit bag from England tour

When the legendary Indian allrounder Kapil Dev had skippered team India to their maiden World Cup title in the year 1983, a 10-year-old Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar trudged towards the Shivaji Park in Bombay along with his elder brother Ajit, to learn the basics and nuances of the art of batting from the veteran coach Ramakant Achrekar.

A child prodigy indeed, it took mere two years for Tendulkar to become a batting star who would on a given Sunday play at least half-a-dozen matches for different teams, as a result of being high-in-demand for his batting services.

A story goes that the coach would place a bet at his bowlers, that the ones who would dismantle Tendulkar’s wickets would be awarded with the coin placed at the top of the stumps at the batting end.

However, as far as the academics were considered, the ‘Master Blaster’ was never a brilliant student but was right up there in the list of mischief-mongers.

Along with fellow Indian team player Vinod Kambli, Sachin also had another childhood friend in Ricky Cuoto. All the three of them would study together at Shardashram Vidyamandir in Dadar.

Sachin Tendulkar once decided to put his friend inside his huge kit bag

Backbenchers like most mischievous children in school generally are, the trio would often get punished in school by the teachers, and made to stand on their bench or outside the class.

During the summer of 1988, the 14-year-old Tendulkar was sponsored for a tour to United Kingdom, under the Star Cricket Club banner to get a know-how of the English pitches and conditions.

Tendulkar had returned back from the tour with a huge kit bag along with him, when one of his friends jokingly remarked that the size of his bag was big enough for Ricky to fit inside.

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Always up for some fun, the mischievous Tendulkar took it as a challenge, emptied his bag and only rested after he had placed Ricky fully inside it and zipped in for the friends to see.

“He had just come back from that tour with a big kit bag. It was something new for me to see such a big kit bag. One of our friends told Sachin that the kit bag is so big that you can easily fit Ricky in the bag. Like always he was ready for the challenge. After a period was over, he emptied the bag, he put me in and zipped it and showed that I’ve won this also,” Ricky had remarked.