India legend Sachin Tendulkar was full of praise for the Indian Premier League [IPL] which is into its tenth season now.

Speaking on his 44th birthday, Tendulkar said that he wasn’t expecting the tournament to become this big a success because club/franchise-based leagues weren’t very popular in India.

“I never thought the IPL would become this big because it was a new concept. This club culture in India didn’t exist and now we look back at ten years, people have started connecting to their clubs and they’re backing players,” said the former Indian batsman.

Tendulkar noted that the IPL has brought a wave of new fans to the game.

“What it has also done is you see families have started attending. It’s not just about few male friends getting together, but even wives and grandmothers are taking interest and that is what the IPL is all about,” said Tendulkar.

The Mumbai-born cricketer also hailed T20 cricket and IPL for taking cricket to new countries where the game hadn’t previously been very popular.

“What this format has done is that it has gone to the countries where cricket didn’t exist. They’ve started following cricket, they’ve started following IPL,” he added.