Cricket is a battlefield between batsmen and bowlers where one of them tries to dominate the game. In this regard, former Indian cricketer VVS Laxman named his favourite battle between the two legendary cricketers Sachin Tendulkar and Shane Warne.
Laxman reminisced the 1998 Chennai Test match against a strong Australian cricket team. At that Sachin has built up his strong image, the former cricketer reminds that the master blaster was fully ready to face them in Chennai. But disappointingly, Sachin got out in the first innings after scoring just four runs.
” Sachin was really well prepared for the Test match in Chennai,” Laxman told Star Sports’ Cricket Connected.
“In the first innings, he was dismissed for 4 runs. He hit a boundary and then tried to play a big shot over mid-on, hitting against the turn and was caught by Mark Taylor.”
Sachin Tendulkar closed himself inside physio’s room:
As in the first innings Sachin lost his wicket early, he was upset and closed himself in the room and came out after an hour, said Laxman. But as always, he has fought back, and he became a run machine in the second innings.
“I remember Sachin locked himself in the physio’s room and only came out after almost an hour. When he came out, we could see his eyes were red. I felt he was very emotional because he was unhappy in the manner he was dismissed,” he added.
Laxman, while narrating the story to Star Sports, said that Sachin Tendulkar took every ball of the greatest spinner Shane Warne to the boundary. He was on song and dismantled Warne’s attack.
VVS Laxman recalls the battle between Sachin Tendulkar and Shane Warne:
” Then, in the second innings, the way he blasted and hammered Shane Warne, who was bowling into the rough outside the leg stump. Warne was using the depth of the crease and when he used to pitch it up, Sachin used to hit it through the mid-off, mid-on region. He went on to get a hundred. That battle with Shane Warne is the best I have seen,” Laxman said.
Sachin Tendulkar, in that innings, scored an unbeaten 155 which led India to win the Chennai Test match by a mammoth margin of 179 runs.