Sachin Tendulkar’s masterful innings of 241 not out against Sydney during the 2004 Border-Gavaskar Trophy stands tall among the pantheons of all-time great knocks in Test cricket, let alone in his career. Battling torrid form in 2003, Tendulkar started the new year with a third Test double-century, allowing India to draw the series 1-1.
Tendulkar had scores of 0, 1, 37, 0 and 44 in Brisbane, Adelaide and Melbourne, and heading into Sydney, the batsman was fiercely dedicated to make it count. In the past, Tendulkar has narrated how he accepted a battle of patience against Australia and came out of it with flying colours. However, the former India batsman has revealed that throughout those five days of the SCG Test, there was a song he constantly listened to, in and out of the ground.
“The song that I heard, I remember in 2004 in Sydney when I scored 241 not out, those five days I only heard one song – Bryan Adams’ Summer of 69,” Tendulkar said during a Q/A session on his YouTube Channel. “I put that song on loop. Whether we were travelling to the ground, in the dressing room, before I was walking out to bat, lunch time, tea time, after the match, going back to the hotel… five days it was only Summer of 69 and nothing else.”
Tendulkar acknowledged that although such things happened rarely in his career, he’d up a similar practice the year before. During the 2003 World Cup in South Africa, in which India finished runner-up and Tendulkar finished as the leading run-scorer with 673 runs – still a record for the most runs in a single edition of a World Cup – the batsman revealed he was consumed by an Indian music album.
“I also remember that during the 2003 World Cup in South Africa, I listened to Lucky Ali’s Sur album. I thought it was really good and as time went by, it kept growing on me more and more,” Tendulkar added.
