How Sachin Tendulkar got shy guy Virendra Sehwag to speak up

Sachin Tendulkar had already established himself as one of the greatest of all times in international cricket when Virender Sehwag broke through the ranks and set himself up as the Little Master’s opening partner.

Sehwag, like many batsmen who grew up watching Tendulkar and took up playing cricket, was described as someone who resembled Tendulkar when he batted and smashed bowlers all around.

In his initial days on the field, he looked as formidable as any other young attacking batsman. But what was he like off it?

In Tendulkar’s words, the Delhi dasher who went on to create the second-best opening partnership record for India in ODI cricket, was ‘too shy’ even to speak to the senior cricketer.

Tendulkar revealed that to make Sehwag open up and speak, he had to play a different trick which worked wonders.

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“When Viru (Virender Sehwag) had just joined, he was a shy guy. He just wouldn’t talk to me. I thought this can’t work. If we need to play together, bat together, I need to make him feel comfortable. So I told him let’s catch up on dinner. Where he told me he was a vegetarian,” Tendulkar recalled on the show ‘What the Duck 3’.

Tendulkar also broke a myth which the young man carried that by eating chicken, one would become fat.

He revealed, “He was not eating chicken because he was told he will become fat. Only thing I told him was if I looked fat! Ever since, he has been eating chicken.”

As an opening pair, Tendulkar and Sehwag scored 3,919 runs in 93 ODI innings at 42.13, with 12 century stands and 18 half-century stands. Their record is overall the fourth best till date in international cricket.

At the first position is the Indian pair of Tendulkar and former captain Sourav Ganguly, who amassed 6,609 runs in 136 ODI innings at an average of 49.32, compiling 21 century stands and 23 fifty stands.