Sachin Tendulkar welcomed a "new rapper in town" after Vinod Kambli bossed the challenge thrown down at him by the 'Master Blaster'. Tendulkar had in January given Kambli a week to perfect and perform the rap from his song 'Cricket Wali Beat' - a challenge that the latter gladly accepted. Although Kambi took a little over the given time, he tweeted a video of him performing the said part of the song in a studio on February 03. Tendulkar on Wednesday retweeted Kambli's video, saying that he was impressed by the performance.
"Dear Master Blaster, Ek baar jo maine commitment kar di, Toh phir main khudki bhi nahi sunta!" Kambli tweeted with the video, quoting the Bollywood movie 'Wanted'.
Retweeting the video, Tendulkar wrote: "That was really impressive, @vinodkambli349! Looks like there's a new rapper in town."
Tendulkar had performed the song along with singer Sonu Nigam in 2017. It was dedicated to his fellow cricketers who had played in World Cups.
Tendulkar had challenged Kambli to perform the song on January 21 via a tweet. "Mr. Kambli, I challenge you to do the rap of my song #CricketWaliBeat! You have 1 week," he had written.
"I'm going to give him a week's time," Tendulkar says. "So, by the 28th (of January), if he doesn't know how to sing that song, then he owes me something," he had added.
Sachin and Kambli, in a much-fabled story from the annals of Indian cricket, were trained by the same coach, played for the same school team and then played together for India. The two had burst into the spotlight when they had put up a historic partnership of 664 runs with individual scores of 326 not out (Tendulkar) and 349 not out (Kambli) for Shardashram Vidyamandir against St Xavier's High School in the Haris Shield semi-final in February 1988.