Junior Tendulkar rolls it over for England at the Lords

Junior Tendulkar rolls it over for England at the Lords: You can never take cricket out of Tendulkar and you can never take Tendulkar out of cricket, as well. But this time around, the Tendulkar we are talking about is not Sachin, rather his 15-year old son Arjun Tendulkar. This Wednesday, Arjun was seen at the Lord’s – bowling in the nets to the English batsmen. He accompanied the other net bowlers to help England prepare for the second Investec Test that starts today.

Neil Burns, who is a former county keeper and who mentors several players is also a close friend of the Tendulkars’; made the initial request to the England’s assistant coach Paul Farbrace if Arjun could watch the training on Tuesday and participate on Wednesday and Farbrace agreed to it. While most of the players out there didn’t know his surname, many of them chatted to him and were surprised to realise his young age. Arjun was also seen chatting and taking tips from England’s bowling Coach Ottis Gibson.

The younger Tendulkar bowled to Ben Stokes among other batsmen and though it was not an ideal practice for the England batsmen before facing the left-arm prestos of the likes of Johnson and Starc; his good run-up, beautiful action and constant line and length of the deliveries he bowled seemed to impress the players as he was seen shaking hands and being congratulated by many of them.

Sachin Tendulkar has one of his apartments very near to Lord’s and particularly at this time of the year, he enjoys his vacations there with his whole family. But this year while Sachin kept himself busy being a spectator at Wimbledon with tennis being his second favourite sport, Arjun was practicing hard in the nets at Lord’s. According to a MCC spokesperson, Arjun is a regular user of the net and gym facilities at the place.

At this year’s IPL, Arjun took left-arm swing bowling tips from the legendary seamer Wasim Akram. Wasim told to NDTV – “I gave him some general tips about fitness and wrist position. I told him how to bring the ball back into the right-hander. I told him to practice it for three months and then I promised him to teach how to take the ball away from right-handers”.

But bowling is the skill he is currently sharpening. He is mainly a devastating batsman and comes more than handy in willow-handling. Last September while playing in the Dhirubhai Ambani International school under-16s, he smashed 188 runs of just 44 balls.