Sachin Tendulkar has scored 49 hundreds in his 463 ODIs and still holds the record for the highest number of one day international hundreds. Interestingly, Tendulkar’s match to century ratio is less than 10. However, the master batsman had to wait for a long time to get his one-days first one day century. It came after more than four years of his ODI debut in his 78th one day international on 9th September 1994. Tendulkar’s opponents in that match were Australia against whom he went on to score nine ODI centuries, the most against any team, in his career.
The match was the 3rd match of the 1994 Singer World Series in Sri Lanka. The venue was R.Premadasa Stadium, Khettarama in Colombo. The other teams were Sri Lanka and Pakistan. India lost their first match and was desperate to win against Australia to record two points.
Tendulkar started to open for India just a few months back in New Zealand and with more balls at his disposal, everyone knew that a maiden century was on the corner.
On 9th September Mohammad Azharuddin won the toss and decided to bat first. Tendulkar was in the mood from the very beginning and started playing his shots to the Australian opening pair of Craig McDermott and Glenn McGrath. He reached his first fifty in just 43 balls and by the time India lost their first wicket for 87, the other opener Manoj Prabhakar scored just 20. Once set, Tendulkar held one end and was focussed on rotating the strike whereas Navjot Sidhu and Azharuddin added quick runs. Tendulkar reached 90 for the first time and finally reached the coveted three-digit mark. It was great excitement for his fans and people were confident this was just the beginning. Tendulkar was finally dismissed for 110. Vinod Kambli added 43 runs and despite not much support from the lower end took India to 246.
Australia lost their captain Mark Taylor early and kept losing wickets regularly. Despite a handy 61 from Mark Waugh and 40 from experienced David Boon they finished on 215 and lost the match by 31 runs. Tendulkar got the Man of the Match award for his maiden hundred but Manoj Prabhakar also bowled brilliantly to get 3 for 34.
