On This Day, 1994: Sachin Tendulkar’s Scored His First ODI Century

Master Blaster Sachin Tendulkar has set a record by scoring 100 international centuries. However, to celebrate the first century in international cricket, Tendulkar had to wait 78 matches. The Mumbai batsman who started as a middle-order player managed to score just 2126 runs from his first 78 matches at an average of 32.71 and strike rate of 78.28. 

On September 9, 1994, Sachin scored his maiden first-class century in a match against Australia. Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe were included in the Sri Lankan Singer Trophy tournament.

Sachin hit a glittering 110 runs against Australia during the third match of the Singer World Series. India made 246/8 off their 50 overs, and then bowled Australia out for 215 to win the match by 31 runs.

At that time nobody would have thought that he would go on to score 49 hundreds and more than 18000 runs in ODIs, but every cricket fan knew that they were seeing a special player in the making.

After scoring his first ODI century, Sachin was a completely different batsman. He started to open for India and in the next 385 ODIs that he played came out to bat and scored 16300 runs at an average of 47.11 and strike rate of 87.28. He scored 49 ODI centuries and 79 fifties after that day. Sachin retired after scoring 100 international centuries.

In total he has also scored 96 half-centuries during a long career which finished against Pakistan in Dhaka in 2012, ironically the same opponents against whom he had made his ODI debut way back in 1989.

Tendulkar has scored 18,426 runs in 463 ODIs. He has scored 15,921 runs in 200 Tests and has set a world record in international cricket.

List of Sachin Tendulkar ODI Hundreds: