Sachin Tendulkar and Brian Lara will be back to the 22 yards. Yes, you read it right! The legends will feature in the Road Safety World Series which will be an annual event from 2020.
Tournament details
The Road Safety World Series aimed at promoting road safety will see prominent retired players like Tendulkar, Lara, Virender Sehwag, and Muttiah Muralitharan, Jacques Kallis, Brett Lee, and Shivnarine Chandrapaul. The first season of the tournament will start between February 2 to 16, 2020 in Mumbai. India Legends, Australia Legends, South Africa Legends, Sri Lanka Legends, and West Indies Legends will be the teams to take part.
A total of 110 retired players gave confirmation in the franchise model based tournament. The participating teams have been restricted to only Test-playing countries for the first season. The tournament will be organized by the Professional Management Group and the Road Safety Cell of the Maharashtra government. The initial plan is to host the event for ten years across India after already receiving approval from the BCCI in August 2018 to conduct the tournament. The payments of players would be taken care of by the franchises, the Road Safety Cell will utilize the profits to promote the cause in addition to highlighting how India ranks the highest in the world in terms of deaths caused on roads.
The old rivalry
This is a great opportunity for cricket fans to relive the moments of the favourite retired cricketers. The social media is already going crazy over the news of Tendulkar and Lara coming together after so long. Tendulkar who retired in 2013 played for the MCC against Rest of the World XI at Lord’s in 2014 and three exhibition T20s in the USA in 2015. He is the leading run-scorer in Test and ODI cricket amassing more than 34,000 runs and 100 centuries. On the other hand, Lara holds the record for the highest individual Test score, unbeaten 400 against England in Antigua in 2004. There used to be a continuous battle between both legends for the top spot. Tendulkar surpassed Lara’s most Test runs in 2008 as the latter scored 11,953 in Test before retiring in 2007.
