SIALKOT — Sachin Tendulkar today commands a whopping price for choosing to paste the Madras Rubber Factory (MRF) sticker on his bat. However, there was a time when he was game for any fees which was offered to him as sponsorship for logo on his bat.


“It’s a huge honour to me to recall those days in 1989 when Tendulkar wanted to play with our bat for a paltry sum of Rs50,000 only,” remembers Zulfiqar Malik who runs the impressive Malik Brothers sports good manufacturing unit in Sialkot.

“There was this little kid who walked into my office with Raman Lamba while the series between India and Pakistan was on in 1989,” remembers Zulfiqar. “Lamba, may Allah rest his soul, had then pleaded with me to do something for the youngster who was hugely talented and destined to play for his country for many years.

“I then decide to take Lamba on his word and asked Sachin what would be the price he would be seeking for bat sponsorship. So shy was this young boy that he said he would rather have Lamba negotiate the deal for him!”.

Tendulkar then proceeded to play with the logo of Malik Brothers on his bat and promptly made an impression on world cricket.

“There was this game in Peshawar when Tendulkar clobbered Abdul Qadir for four sixes in an over. I later joked with Qadir and asked him how he could be smashed so mercilessly by the youngster. Qadir shot back promptly that it was the “aujar (weapon)” which I had provided to Tendulkar which had done the destruction.”

Zulfiqar claimed that Tendulkar not only used his bat for the entire Indo-Pak series of 1989 but had also done so for a certain period when he returned home after the series. “There was this footage of Tendulkar I was watching on television the other day when I saw him batting with the logo of MB on his bat. All the memories came flooding back. “Here is this man now who is peerless in world cricket with 35 Test centuries and 39 hundreds in one-day cricket.

“Sponsorship of millions now chase him for his endorsement. But there was a time when he once sought out the deal himself from us. He made his first few runs with our bat and the rest, as they say, is history!”

Zulfiqar remembers that the specification of a Tendulkar bat, even on those days, was very precise.

“He always preferred a blade which had thick edges. He preferred the banana shape of the bat which allows the willow greater flexibility at the time of impact with the ball.

Now you see most Test cricketers in the sub-continent opt for this “banana” shape. Even the “goras” are now seeing the virtue in such kind of blades.”