The legendary Indian batter Sachin Tendulkar had made quite a name for himself by the age of mere 13. A consistent run-making habit for a batter so young had even the passengers in the local Bombay trains talk about him.
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Tendulkar’s popularity had skyrocketed further up during the Harris Shield inter-school tournament in 1988, when he represented the Shardashram Vidyamandir School which boasted of having one of the strongest team in the entire country at the junior level.
The 14-year-old Tendulkar had already scored a double century in the quarterfinal match, and nothing less than a three-figure personal score was expected of him during the semi-final against St. Xavier’s School as well.
In anticipation for yet another Tendulkar master class, the crowd had turned up in a decent number, only to watch him bat. Only he would have an aura around him to have people leave their work and admire him display his skills while batting in a junior-level, inter-school match.
Sachin Tendulkar was promised free food by a vendor each time he would score a century
Renowned Mumbai batter Amol Mazumdar was also part of the Shardashram Vidyamandir School team during the time, and was supposed to bat next with the pair of Sachin Tendulkar and his childhood friend Vinod Kambli at the crease.
Beating the bowlers black and blue, Sachin and Kambli had smashed 192* and 182* individual runs respectively by the end of ‘Day 1’, thereby completely deflating the spirits of the opposition bowlers.
Disobeying their coach Ramakant Achrekar’s orders to declare the innings early the next morning, the duo continued to pile on runs at a healthy rate until the Lunch Break, stitching together a record stand of 664-runs with both of them smashing unbeaten triple-centuries.
Such was the show on display that day, that other matches were stopped in order to watch the duo operate on the field.
Mazumdar, during an interaction with ESPNCricinfo in the year 2004, revealed that even before of the aforementioned semi-final contest, the nearby vendors from the street across the Azad Maidan in Bombay always demanded to know the score at which Tendulkar was batting in a match at the venue.
In fact, one of the food vendors had even offered Tendulkar a free meal each time he would score a century for his team. Tendulkar did not let him down that day, and only declared the innings with the team scorecard reading 748/2 d after playing out 120 Overs.
