Thaindian News

Mohali, Oct 17 (IANS) The roar of a few thousand spectators was enough to announce his arrival on the lush-green outfield of the Punjab Cricket Association (PCA) Stadium here Friday. As Sachin Tendulkar walked in, he surely must have carried the burden of expectations of millions of fans to achieve the biggest record of his cricketing career. Tendulkar finally crossed the figure of 11,953 runs, going past his contemporary great Brian Lara, to reach the milestone of leading scorer in Test cricket. He surpassed the record when he scored three runs off the first ball bowled after tea by debutant pacer Peter Siddle in the second Test against Australia. Tendulkar looked up to the skies, thanking the almighty for his achievement.

It took him 152 Tests and 247 innings at an average of 54.03 against Lara’s 131 Tests.

Crackers were burst at the PCA stadium and all Australian cricketers walked up to the little master to congratulate him. Play had to be stopped for a few minutes as smoke filled the air.

The countdown for his reaching the milestone started during the recent India-Sri Lanka Test series in July this year. However, Tendulkar could not score too many runs during the series.

He again could not achieve the feat in the first Test against Australia in Bangalore after he got out on 49 runs, 15 runs short of the world record, in the second innings.

When Tendulkar got to the record, there were hardly 4,000 spectators in the stadium, most of them school children.

Lara had wished Tendulkar luck for this series to achieve the record.

Tendulkar also holds record of the highest number of runs in one-day internationals (16,361).

Tendulkar, who started his career versus Pakistan in 1989 as a 16-year-old, also has the record of the highest number of Test centuries (39) and ODI centuries (42).