The 14 August connection between Sachin Tendulkar and Don Bradman

Sachin Tendulkar scored his first Test century against England on 14 August 1990. On the same day in 1948, Don Bradman played his last Test against the same opposition.

Sachin Tendulkar and Donald Bradman. | Photo: Special arrangement

New Delhi: Exactly 30 years ago, just ahead of India’s Independence Day, ‘Master Blaster’ Sachin Tendulkar announced his arrival on the global stage with his first Test century, at Old Trafford against England.

THIS DAY THAT YEAR: Rewind to 1990 and the world witnessed @sachin_rt's maiden international ton. At the tender age of 17, the little master scored his first ton in whites at Old Trafford. What a moment! pic.twitter.com/yT0xMlEu8j

— BCCI (@BCCI) August 14, 2018

The Indian team, led by Mohammed Azharuddin, was struggling when the 17-year-old prodigy walked in at 109-4. He batted for 225 minutes with Manoj Prabhakar and scored an unbeaten 119 off 189 balls to save the game for India. He was awarded the Man of the Match. He also became the then second-youngest player to score a Test hundred, behind Pakistan’s Mushtaq Mohammad.

In a career spanning nearly 25 years, Tendulkar would go on to score 100 international centuries in over 660 matches, with 34,350 runs to his name.

But the significance of this day was noted Friday by cricket commentator Harsha Bhogle. He highlighted that 14 August not only marked the beginning of a cricketing legend’s dominant career, but also the end of another.

The day Bradman walked out to bat for the last time in a Test match. The day Tendulkar scored his first Test century.

— Harsha Bhogle (@bhogleharsha) August 14, 2020

On 14 August 1948, Australian master Sir Donald Bradman, who is also known as the ‘The Don’, batted in his last Test, played against England at the Oval. 

This Test is most famous for the fact that Bradman was dismissed for a duck when he needed just 4 runs to have left the game at an average of 100. He retired with an average of 99.94, which is seen as the greatest achievement by any sportsman in any sport.

The legend of Bradman

Bradman is regarded as the greatest cricketer of the 20th century, who has nearly 7,000 Test runs and over 28,000 runs in first-class cricket to his name over a 20-year career.

He was knighted as ‘Sir’ in 1949. He was inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame posthumously in 2009 and his image has appeared in coins and postage stamps in Australia.

In his obituary in the New York Times in 2001, it was written that among Bradman’s many fans was apartheid hero Nelson Mandela who asked an Australian after his release from prison after 27 years (in 1990), “Is Sir Donald Bradman still alive?”