Son of Sachin, Arjun Tendulkar, making his way
Steve Waugh’s son Austin is turning heads but it was the son of an old rival of his father’s who starred in Bowral yesterday.
Steve Waugh’s son Austin is turning heads in the junior ranks, but it was an old rival of his father’s who captured attention at a match in Bowral yesterday.
Arjun Tendulkar, 18, son of the legendary Sachin, turned out for the Cricket Club of India side against Hong Kong as part of the Spirit of Cricket Global Challenge, a tournament run by SCG Cricket.
Taller than his diminutive dad and quicker, Arjun is a smart bowler and a free-flowing batsman whose cover drive had the Bowral cricket community in raptures yesterday. Arjun is currently the same age his father announced himself with a century at the SCG in January 1992. The veteran of 200 Tests famously scored an unbeaten double century during Waugh senior’s farewell match at the venue in 2008.
Arjun will play for the BCCI side at the SCG as part of the tournament this Sunday, but was at the venue with the team for a dinner during the week and visited the dressing rooms where his father would have passed away many an hour.
Yesterday, Tendulkar junior picked up four wickets with his left-arm medium pace on the Bradman Oval and was at one stage on a hat-trick.
He then scored a breezy 48 with the bat. While his mother and father were not on hand for the game they were kept updated every 30 minutes.
Tendulkar junior also visited the Bradman Centre by the ground, inspecting where his father had signed his name on a wall marking cricketers heights, marking and signing his a good 15-20 centimetres above it.
The young Tendulkar has played for Mumbai’s under-16 and under-19 sides and his father does his best to shield him from the glare of publicity and the obvious comparisons.
“I am not interfering in his career because I think it is not fair,” Sachin told Economic Times in April 2016.
“He has to have freedom to express himself. I can guide him. Not on a regular basis, but when I feel that he needs to be told something, then I do. I don’t take his class every evening when he comes back home. I do not want to lecture, but let him enjoy the game and fall in love with cricket, which he is (doing). I have told him things about hard work like any father would.
“Unfortunately, he has the excess baggage of his surname and I know that is going to be there. It is not easy for him. For me, it was different as my father was a writer and nobody questioned me on cricket. I feel that my son should not be compared to me and should be judged for who he is.”
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