When Greg Chappell met Arjun 'Sachin' Tendulkar

Back to blogging after a while. Now, I had this interesting write up from Rediff in my kitty for more than one year. I now feel that it should be added here in my blogs. Its interesting to read the Junior Tendulkar's comments. He is growing fast and may be, who knows, within a decade we would see him in Indian colours. Quite a prospect.

Source: http://us.rediff.com/cricket/2005/apr/04arjun.htm

Here is the excerpt from the article:

[... "Pravin Barve, the secretary of the club, introduced Chappell to Arjun Sachin Tendulkar, who had aptly turned up in his cricket whites.

"Oh, is it Sachin's son?" said the Australian. "Hello, little fella. What's your name?"

The little fella, looking a little bewildered at the media cluster and the 56-year-old stranger, blurted after some thought, "Arjun."

"Andrew?" asked a rather confused-sounding Chappell.

More bewilderment from Tendulkar junior's end.

"Oh... Arjun," Chappell corrected himself after some prompting.

Arjun was then directed to sit with the former Aussie captain. "He has some questions for you," someone told Chappell.

"Oh I don't think he needs to ask me any questions. He has the best batsman to answer them," grinned Chappell at Arjun's obviously puzzled stare.

Chappell continued, "So, do you bowl or bat like your dad?"

"Both."

"Oh yes, you do? What's your highest score? What's the most number of runs you've made?"

Arjun thought long and hard. "Eight."

"That's good. That's a lot of runs for a five-year-old. How did you score them? You hit boundaries or ran singles?"

"Fours," the delighted young man sounded off.

"And what is your favourite shot? The square cut, the pull or the cover drive?"

Things were getting a bit too technical for a lot of people in the room, let alone a five-year-old who had yet to come to terms with the breezy Australian accent.

"Six," was Arjun's monosyllabic answer.

"Okay, so it doesn't matter how you hit it as long as you hit a six. Good!"

The press photographers were taking too long to appear and Chappell and Arjun were running out of topics of conversation; they decided it was time to say goodbye.

"He is a intelligent young man; thinks a lot before speaking," said Chappell of the youngster. He then recalled that the first official game of any sorts that he had played was at the age of 10.

"But I had started playing in the backyard when I was three. And, by the time I was five, I had pretty much started expressing my style of batting."..."]