Sachin Tendulkar wishes childhood friend Vinod Kambli 'health & happiness' as he turns 49

Cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar wished health and happiness to his former Indian team-mate as well as childhood friend Vinod Kambli as he turned 49 on Monday. 

'Have a blessed year': Sachin Tendulkar

Taking to the micro-blogging site, the Master Blaster wished Kambli to have a blessed year full of health and happiness. The Little Master then urged the southpaw to always keep smiling.

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Tendulkar & Kambli's cricketing careers

Both Tendulkar and Kambli were trained under coach Ramakant Achrekar and studied in the same school i.e. Shardashram Vidyamandir. The Mumbai batting greats shared a 664-run stand for their school Shardashram Vidyamandir against St Xavier's on February 24, 1988. 

Coming back to their respective international cricketing careers, Kambli scored 2,477 runs in his ODI career (104 games) while he accumulated 1,084 runs in 17 Test matches. The former left-handed middle-order batsman also scored 9,965 runs in 129 first-class matches and 6,476 runs in 221 List-A games. He bid adieu to the game in 2000 when he was no longer in the scheme of the national team management.

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Post-retirement, the ex-middle-order batsman decided to try his luck in acting and also succeeded in finding roles in a handful of movies like Annarth (2002), Pal Pal Dil Ke Ssaat (2009), and, a 2015 Kannada movie titled 'Bettanagere' etc.

Tendulkar had made his debut at the international level as a teenager back in 1989. Sachin has scored 15921 runs in 200 Tests and 18426 runs in 463 One Day Internationals. He also remains the top run-scorer in both these formats to date.

The batting maestro also has 100 international centuries to his name which is a feat that no one else has achieved. The champion batsman also became the first player to score a double century in ODI cricket when he scored an unbeaten 200 against South Africa at Gwalior in February 2010. 

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