Azad Maidan

This guide to Azad Maidan in Mumbai returns to February 1988, when two Bombay schoolboys, fourteen-year-old Sachin Tendulkar and sixteen-year-old Vinod Kambli, batted for their school against St. Xavier's in the Harris Shield semi-final. Their coach, Ramakant Achrekar, had given them a clear instruction before leaving the ground that day: declare early. He was not there to see what happened next, as the two boys kept batting long past what he expected. Stand among the twenty-two pitches that stretch across this ground, worn smooth by decades of schoolboy cricket.