Sachin Tendulkar refused to put his arm around a girl for an ad shoot at 16: ‘He said I’m going home’

Prahlad Kakkar made some pretty iconic ad campaigns with Bollywood movie stars and cricket icons of the 1990s and as he released his book Adman Madman, Prahlad discussed some of his most cherished memories of working with the stars in a chat with Cyrus Broacha. Shared on the YouTube channel of The Quorum, Prahlad recalled working with a 16-year-old Sachin when he had just made it to the Indian team.

Sachin had just gotten signed on by Pepsi and Prahlad recalled pulling a prank on the young cricketer that actually led him to say that he won’t shoot and was ready to go home. Pepsi had started a contest and the winner of the contest would get a chance to sit with the team in the players’ box. “I said the winner is going to be a girl and you are going to put your arm around her and you are going to lead her into the players’ box. He said ‘No, I can’t do that’. So I said ‘why not?’ He said ‘because I have never held a girl’,” he recalled.

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When Prahlad asked Sachin if there were any girls in his school, Sachin said that he had never spoken to any girl in school. “He said ‘no, I can’t do this commercial. I am going home’. Then I told him that we are just pulling your leg and you don’t have to do any of that. It’s going to be a young boy, put an arm around him and take him there so he was fine after that,” Prahlad shared with a smile.

The ad-man said that Sachin knew very little English at the time but was proficient in Marathi. “I remember the nicest thing about Sachin at that time. He looked at that truck full of Pepsi and he asked my driver, ‘Can I have a Pepsi?’ He said the whole truck is for you,” he recalled with fondness.