A hotel worker who gave unsolicited yet crucial advice that helped the batting of cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar has been located after the Indian superstar made an appeal on Twitter.

Identified as part of the security staff, Guruprasad told The News Minute that, “close to two decades after this conversation, I did not expect him to even remember me.”

The worker approached Tendulkar about 19 years ago at the hotel where he worked in Chennai, saying he had noticed he swung his bat differently when he was wearing an arm guard.

Tendulkar, who was midway through his record-breaking career at the time, said the advice was valuable as he redesigned his arm guard and went from strength to strength.

“I don’t think I had spoken about this to anyone in the world. I was the only person who was aware of that,” he said in a video posted on Twitter.

“After that I actually came back to the room from the ground, carried my elbow guard and I re-designed my elbow guard according to the correct size and the amount of padding and I played.”

The hotel said it had found the worker and offered to set up a meeting. He was located by television channel News18 Tamil Nadu.

“I asked him (Tendulkar) if I can give him a suggestion concerning cricket,” Guruprasad, was quoted as saying by the The News Minute. “I really wasn’t sure if he would listen to someone like me but he readily agreed.”

The meeting apparently took place in early 2001 during the Test series against Australia, when Tendulkar scored 126 in the first innings in Chennai.

The 46-year-old Tendulkar retired in 2013 after scoring more than 34,000 runs in Tests and one-day internationals, including a record 100 centuries.

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Guruprasad came to know about the tweet by Tendulkar through his nephew in France and said that his friends and family were elated with the news.

“They are all thrilled and excited. This has been emotional,” said Guruprasad, “I only wish my parents had been alive to see this day. They would have been proud.”

(With AFP inputs)