'Mr. Tendulkar are your earnings in excess of Rs 300,000?' - Farokh Engineer narrates a lovely incident involving Sachin Tendulkar

Former Indian cricketer Farokh Engineer, who represented India in 46 matches in the purest format of the game, narrated a funny anecdote involving India’s batting legend Sachin Tendulkar. Tendulkar is one of the greatest batsmen in the history of cricket and has a plethora of records to his name in the gentleman’s game.

In his glorious international career of 25 years from 1989 to 2013, Sachin amassed 15,921 runs in 200 Test matches at an average of 53.8 along with scoring 18,426 runs in 463 One Day Internationals at 44.8. Till date, he is the highest run-scorer of all-time in International cricket. Thus, it is no surprise that the batsman boasts of having good money and is involved in a number of business ventures.

Reminiscing an interaction between a bank official and Sachin, Farokh Engineer told Indranil Basu on Sportskeeda Live, “There’s a lovely story about Sachin Tendulkar. With all the wealth he has amassed, the bank club tries to get him to open a credit card. So he is asking routine questions like ‘Mr. Tendulkar, are your earnings in excess of Rs 300,000?’ or something like that. And Sachin shrugged his shoulders and said some days yes and some days no!”

Sunil Gavaskar advocated players should earn more money: Farokh Engineer

Further in the interaction, Farokh recalled the times when the cricketers were not well-off financially as they were paid extremely low when compared to the officials. The veteran batsman revealed that there were times when they used to get just INR 50 a day for playing a Test match and also had to take good care of their kit as unlike today, they weren’t given 20 to 30 bats.

“We used to oil our bats in my time. Now no one oils the bats. These guys get about 20-30 bats. We had one bat that too bought with our own money. We used to get Rs 50 a day to play Test cricket.

“Now you will think it’s a joke. It’s great for cricket now. I think people like Sunil Gavaskar advocated players should earn more money. It was just the officials earning more money those days and players used to lose out,” said Engineer.