The ‘Master Blaster’ Sachin Tendulkar recently revealed that he never planned and practised his iconic shot, the ‘upper-cut’!
The legendary batsman has always been a fan of cheeky shots like the paddle sweep which gave him a lot of success in the earlier days of T20 cricket as well. In a YouTube video, he revealed that it was in 2002 during India’s tour of South Africa when he thought of playing it.
During a Q&A session, a fan asked Tendulkar whether he practised upper-cut or was it just an instinct, to which the legend replied that it was just instincts.
Tendulkar narrates the story behind that shot!
“It happened in 2002 in South Africa, when we were playing a Test match in Bloemfontein. We were batting first and Makhaya Ntini was bowling around the off stump as he normally used to bowl short of a length. He rarely bowled length deliveries. Since he used to run wide of the crease, I could sight the line”.
“The South African pitches offer enough bounce. The normal tendency to deal with those bouncers is to go top of the bowl. And if it bounces more than usual for somebody of my height, why not get under it and still be aggressive and attacking,” said Sachin Tendulkar.
Tendulkar concluded saying the shot helped him disrupt the bowlers as he was converting dot balls into boundaries.
“That shot disturbed a number of fast bowlers because they bowl bouncers to concede a dot ball. But I converted those into boundaries. I actually didn’t plan anything. Sometimes you just have to let your natural instincts take over after getting at the crease. And that’s what I did”, he said.
Tendulkar would go on to hit a similar upper-cut to Shoaib Akhtar in the 2003 WC which gave the shot its iconic status.
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