Sachin Tendulkar attracted plenty of curiosity during his debut tour of Pakistan in 1989 ufffd he was a bit of an overgrown schoolboy, curly hair, quiet, in awe of everything, excited by the environment of international cricket, in front of an audience not known for being overtly friendly to Indians.
I talked to him after the Sialkot match, where he had just wiped the blood from his nose after being struck by a nasty bouncer. "Why didn't you just come back?" I queried. u00a0He just smiled. That was more eloquent than a speech. A year later, still a teenager, he saved the blushes for India at Old Trafford with a memorable hundred.
I asked him on behalf of Prannoy Roy's The World This Week, whether it was a difficult innings. "I was seeing the ball well," he said - no theatricals, just a matter of fact understatement!u00a0
