Sachin slams his first IPL ton

Two weeks after the "proudest moment" of his career at the Wankhede Stadium, Sachin Tendulkar checked off another item on his ever-shrinking to-do list with his first century in Twenty20s. It wasn't the prettiest of his innings but he combined power and placement in a knock that propelled Mumbai Indians to 182 for 2 against Kochi Tuskers Kerala. Worryingly for the rest of the teams in the tournament, Mumbai didn't even need the awesome hitting-ability of Rohit Sharma, Andrew Symonds and Kieron Pollard to run up such a tall total.

Though Tendulkar's dispatched his second delivery for four with a crowd-pleasing straight drive, it was a nervy beginning from him. He was nearly run out on 0, umpire Paul Reiffel turned down two lbw appeals from Vinay Kumar which should have been given, and there was also a close call for caught behind, and an outside edge off Thisara Perera just beat the keeper.

It was Tendulkar who made most of the early runs on a track that was affording some movement to the new ball bowlers, though it is Davy Jacobs' brief to provide Mumbai blazing starts. There were no massive overs early on, and with Jacobs struggling to find the boundary, Mumbai made relatively sedate progress, reaching 57 in eight overs before Jacobs was bowled.

That brought together the pair of Tendulkar and Ambati Rayudu, which was so effective in neutralising Royal Challengers Bangalore in their previous match. Rayudu immediately took charge, blasting two sixes off a Raiphi Gomez over. He muscled two straight boundaries off Ravindra Jadeja in the 14th over, and followed that with a six and a four to long-on off Ramesh Powar in the next. Rayudu's share in the 64 runs the pair added till then was 44.

Here is a list of the other centuries in the IPL