Struck by persistent rain in the last one week in Melbourne and Brisbane which restricted them to unfinished games and indoor nets, the visitors had their first full-blown nets at the MCG with Tendulkar having ears of star-struck youngsters of the team.

No sooner than the trainer John Gloster had made the squad go through their stretching exercises, Tendulkar took Robin Uthappa and Suresh Raina aside and spoke at length about the conditions and pitches which they would come up against in the coming weeks.

Tendulkar then reserved a good part of his discourse for Rohit Sharma who seemed eager to latch on to the pearls of wisdom from the great man.

Indeed Sharma made sure that he was tackling the deliveries in the desired manner by having his batting video-taped by team’s computer analyst Dhananjay.