After a year's wait, Sachin Tendulkar finally stepped away from shared glory to emerge as a sole leading century-maker in the history of Test cricket.
The Sri Lankans gave him a few anxious moments and the weight of the achievement seemed to be weighing on Tendulkar's shoulders as he tread through the 90s.
The crowd rose in applause as the batsman turned the ball down to square-leg for a single to complete his 35th Test hundred and surpass Sunil Gavaskar's record for the most number of Test centuries during the first innings of the second Test against Sri Lanka at the Feroze Shah Kotla ground in New Delhi on Saturday.
Tendulkar was 100 not out from 177 balls at the end of the first day of the Test.
Interestingly, it was the same venue where Gavaskar scored his 29th century to equal Sir Donald Bradman's record for most hundreds.
Tendulkar scored the record-breaking 35th hundred in his 124th Test. Before the match, he had scored 10134 in 198 Test innings at the average of 57.25.
The 32-year-old levelled with Gavaskar with a masterly 248 not out against Bangladesh in the first Test of the two match series, at the Bangabandhu stadium in Dhaka last December.
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