mumbai sachin tendulkar loves to parade his maharashtrian roots but not at the cost of national pride during a media interaction with select mediapersons on friday the master blaster sent out a strong message to all those supposedly upholding the marathi cause i am extremely proud of being a maharashtrian but mumbai is a part of india and i play for india watch videoswitching to english hindi and marathi with as much ease as he lets those boundaries flow from his bat tendulkar was the quintessential indian during the interaction initiated by wsg right from the time he first put on the india cap on a wintry november morning at karachi in 1989 which he termed as the best moment of his cricketing career tendulkar emphasised it was a dream which i continue to live even today so what if he is two days shy of celebrating 20 years in international cricket the batting maestro says after that donning the india cap whatever i achieved subsequently is a mere reflection in the national causeabove all the affection and support from the cricket fans of the country has been immense you need people to share your success and i have more than a billion people that is more than enough for me he remarkedso what has been his mantra for success at home there was an unwritten rule let others talk about your past you just have to think about the futurein all tendulkar spent nearly six hours patiently tending to interviews including an interaction with select media which again was a rare sight since the batting legend often fights shy of the media spotlightnormally when he spends that kind of time on a cricket field he returns with a hundred under his belt for a change this time he was at the receiving end to his credit he was rarely flustered as he patiently addressed every query which ranged from the bold to the bizarre often he pointed out factual errors but what stood out was his elephantine memory when somebody asked him to relive the time when was stuck on the nineties during an interschool match tendulkar took over with ease it was a match against don bosco he said i was 96 not out and was keen to get the hundred because i often used to ask my coach ramakant achrekar to come home for lunch he would brush it away saying hed come only come if i scored a century it was also going to be my first century in competitive cricket i couldnt sleep the whole night the next morning my father and i visited a ganpati temple on the way to the ground i reached the century in the first over and when we returned for the lunch break i went up to the coach and said sir youll come home now wont you another query was related to a rajasthan player gohil who tendulkar apparently had been on the lookout for for many years