Imagine this: Piyush Chawla was one-month-old when Sachin Tendulkar played his first international match; Rohit Sharma, Suresh Raina and almost half of this Team India were toddlers playing with plastic bats when he was battling Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis.

Sometimes being a a senior in the dressing room full of young faces can be difficult, but trust Tendulkar not to let anything bother him.

“I just tell them every time they see me they have to wish me ‘good morning, sir’,” he joked after his unbeaten 117 gave India a crucial 1-0 lead in the best-of-three finals against Australia in Sydney on Sunday.

“But we share our jokes and they are allowed to pull my leg as well. I’ve always been open and friendly and I crack jokes with them all the time,” he said.

Tendulkar insisted that he was not lonely in the dressing room. “I don’t know why people think like this. It is a team and once you are selected to play for India, nobody looks at your age. When I was 16, nobody would bowl slower to me — they would all have a go at me. When you cross the boundary line, only the performance counts,” he said.

Not just inside the dressing room and to his mates, Tendulkar can spread a few smiles even among the opposition player with his one-liners.

There was a quite flutter when a Brett Lee beamer clocked at 143 kmph landed bang on Tendulkar’s shoulder yesterday. That hurt for sure, and in a series as tense as this, the intentions of that delivery were being doubted.

... contd.