Tendulkar showed that he was prepared to get his head down and graft with his first half-century occupying 118 balls.

It was only after tea that Tendulkar started to unleash his repertoire of strokes as he reached three figures with his 16th four - a flat batted pull off Alamgir Sheriyar - off 197 deliveries.

The Indians were happy to be able to get in some match practice after their defeat in the First Test following the wash-out of the opening two days of the county game as they reached 417-8 off 105 overs by the close.

The only real disappointment for the Indians was another failure by skipper Sourav Ganguly who followed his five and nought at Lord's by making a scratchy 24.

Indian openers Wasim Jaffer and Virender Sehwag put on 99 in relatively untroubled fashion, although Matt Mason bowled two lively spells, but then three wickets fell in the space of two overs.

Off-spinner Gareth Batty was brought into the attack and his third delivery accounted for Sehwag (42) who fell to a fine catch from Mason running back to long on.

Then Batty's next ball got rid of Jaffer (43) who pushed forward and was caught behind by James Pipe who was making his first senior appearance of the season.

That brought in Tendulkar who survived the hat-trick ball when he played and missed at the former Surrey player outside the off-stump.

But then 99-0 became 99-3 when Sanjay Banga (0) drove at Alamgir Sheriyar and gave Pipe his second catch.

Tendulkar took time to play himself in and lost the services of Ganguly and Parthiv Patel (0) in successive overs to the persevering Sheriyar.

In-form Rahul Dravid retired hurt on 41 at the tea interval but it was only a minor knock and he was fit enough to return at the fall of the eighth wicket.

In the final session Tendulkar really cut loose with a string of exquisite boundaries and Ajay Ratra contributed only four to a stand of 51 for the seventh wicket.

Tendulkar's third 50 spanned only 43 balls before he finally fell for 169 going for a big hit off occasional bowler Ben Smith who claimed only the third first-class wicket of his career.

In total he had struck 30 boundaries in his 246-ball innings which lasted five hours.

His dismissal was the signal of the return of Dravid and he had time to reach his half-century before stumps.