Former Pakistan fast bowler, Waqar Younis went on to recall that he was the first bowler to dismiss the batting legend Sachin Tendulkar in their debut Test in Karachi in 1989. Notably, both Waqar and Tendulkar debuted in the same match in 1989 in the Karachi Test and the Pakistan pacer went on to dismiss the then Indian teenager.

Tendulkar scored 15 runs in 24 balls after which he was cleaned up by Waqar with a brilliant inswinger but the youngster didn’t fail to leave a glimpse of him being a genius. However, Tendulkar scored a half-century (59 off 172 balls) in the first innings of the second Test. In the next match, Sachin was quite close to amassing another fifty but missed out on the feat after being clean bowled by Abdul Qadir for 41.

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During a chat on The Greatest Rivalry Podcast, Waqar Younis said, “The first Test was at Karachi and I got him early. I think he scored 15. He played a couple of really classy on-drives and straight drives in that 15. He didn’t score much after that in that series but the fifty you were mentioning which he scored in Sialkot, that was on a green top wicket.”

He further recalled, “We wanted the series to have a result and we produced a real green-topper. He came in and got hit on the nose very early in the innings. For a 16-year-old kid, he looked pale at the time, but very determined. I remember [Navjot Singh] Sidhu was batting with him and they both took five, seven minutes and [then] he was ready to go. Then he played that knock of fifty which really showed his class.”

Waqar also went on to recall his first memory of the then ‘Indian batting prodigy’, having heard of a schoolboy who was scoring triple centuries for fun. Younis asserted that they underestimated Sachin’s greatness from the first impression.

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Waqar Younis said, “About Sachin, the entire India Under-19 team, they were just raving about him. He’s only a schoolboy, scoring triple-centuries at school. Who scores triple-centuries at school? Even scoring a century at school is an amazing thing. At first look, he didn’t really give me the impression that he’s going to be the great Sachin Tendulkar. What he has done over the years is amazing, on the field, off the field.”