Watch: Sachin Tendulkar playing breathtaking drives, flicks and pulls will make you wonder if it's 1998 all over again

On India's National Sports Day, Sachin Tendulkar fulfilled the wishes of a million fans who wished to see him pick up the bat again. Tendulkar put on gloves and picked up the willow to share a breathtaking video of him playing some delightful cricketing strokes during an indoor session. With a sticker-less bat, Tendulkar almost rolled back the years producing a range of shots that promises to bring back memories of a peak Sachin from 1998 that dominated bowlers left, right and centre.

The video montage had it all. The trademark backfoot punch and the straight drive, the flicks, the pulls, the exquisite on-the-up cover drive, and to cap it off, the upper cut. While it was a tennis ball Tendulkar was up against, the sound it made off the bat should come as music to the ears to all Sachin fans. "It's #NationalSportsDay and how could I not play the sport I love and dedicated my life to. Share your pictures/videos playing your favourite sport," he tweeted.

The year 1998 was when Tendulkar at his ruthless best. It was statistically his best year. There were no T20s back in the day, but some of the innings he played would have been the perfect brand ambassador for the format that was still some years away from debuting. Tendulkar tallied a staggering 2541 runs from 42 innings and boasted a combined average of 68.67 to go with a strike-rate of 93.69, and nine ODI hundreds.

What made the year even more special for Tendulkar was that he was at his belligerent best against the team everyone wanted to beat, Australia. Against the Aussies, Tendulkar averaged a mind-boggling 88.71 in ODIs and 111.50 in Tests. Of the 12 centuries that Tendulkar hammered that year, six of them came against Australia – the famous twin centuries (143 and 134) in Sharjah, 141 in Dhaka, 155 in Chennai, 100 in Kanpur and 177 in Bengaluru.

The next best year of Tendulkar was 2010, when he became the first batter to notch up an ODI double ton against South Africa. He scored hundreds in Chittagong, Mirpur, Kolkata, Colombo, Bangalore, Centurion and Johannesburg in 2010, but 1998 remains special to all Tendulkar fans as it was the year Tendulkar achieved batting Nirvana.