Australian cricket bat maker Spartan Sports International sued by cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar

Mumbai: In a first of such instances, Indian cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar has taken up a hard step of filing a civil lawsuit against an Australian bat manufacturer. Tendulkar accuses that the bat maker brand has used his name and image to promote products and in return, have failed to pay him two million dollars in royalties. The Australian bat maker is Sydney-based Spartan Sports International with who he had entered into an agreement in 2016.

As per the agreement, the company agreed to pay him at least $1 million a year in exchange of which they will be using his image, logo and promotional services in their sporting goods. They had used the tag "Sachin by Spartan" to sell their products. According to the agreement, the master-blaster promoted their products and even appeared at a range of promotional events as a part of the promotional activities. He went to places like London and Mumbai for the promotions. There are proper documents with the cricketer to prove the strength of his words.

But, turning to be very unprofessional, by September 2018, Spartan failed to make a single payment that it promised in the agreement. This made Tendulkar make a formal request first but when it did not work, he ended the agreement and asked the company to discontinue using his name, images, and other things. Much to his dismay, Spartan continued promoting their products using Sachin’s name and images.

In fact, Spartan’s chief operating officer Les Galbraith did not respond to a private message that was sent to his LinkedIn page. This finally compelled the world famous top scoring batsman to finally sue the company.

Tendulkar retired from One-day International cricket in 2012 with a record of scoring a whopping 34,000 runs and 100 centuries. He played for 24 years since 1989 that ended in 2013.

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