Bengaluru: Sachin Tendulkar today reached another milestone as he became the highest century-maker in World Cup history by scoring his fifth hundred in the prestigious event.
The 37-year-old reached the landmark during the group B clash against England when he glanced burly paceman Tim Bresnan for a boundary towards the fine leg region in the first ball of the 35th over. It was his 47th ODI century and his 98th overall.
Former India captain Sourav Ganguly, current Australia captain Ricky Ponting and his former teammate Mark Waugh have all scored four World Cup hundreds.
With Ganguly and Waugh retired, it is only Ponting who has a chance to match or surpass Tendulkar.
Tendulkar scored 120 runs from 115 balls and the knock was adorned with five sixes and 10 fours.
Tendulkar, playing his sixth World Cup, also holds the records for most runs and most half-centuries in the flagship event of the ICC.
He has accumulated 1944 runs in 38 matches and has scored 13 fifties so far, followed by Ponting with 1577 runs in 41 matches.
Ganguly is the only other Indian who has managed to score more than one thousand runs in World Cup matches.
He scored 1006 runs in 21 matches and stands 11th in the list of highest run scorers in World Cup.
During the course of his innings, Tendukar shared a magnificent 134-run partnership with for the second wicket with Gautam Gambhir, who scored 51 runs.
India made one change from the team that beat fellow co-hosts Bangladesh by 87 runs in Dhaka, bringing in leg-spinner Piyush Chawla for wayward fast bowler Shanthakumaran Sreesanth.
That gave India a second spinner alongside off-break bowler Harbhajan Singh.
England made two switches from the side that scraped a six-wicket win over the Netherlands after fast bowler Stuart Broad was ruled out with illness, bringing in fellow seamer Ajmal Shahzad.
They also dropped all-rounder Ravi Bopara and, like India, opted for a second spinner in left-armer Michael Yardy on a pitch expected to take turn.
This match had originally been scheduled for Kolkata but was switched to Bangalore after International Cricket Council officials said work still needed to be done on the Eden Gardens ground to make it tournament ready.
India: Virender Sehwag, Sachin Tendulkar, Gautam Gambhir, Virat Kohli, Yuvraj Singh, Mahendra Singh Dhoni (capt/wkt), Yusuf Pathan, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, Piyush Chawla, Munaf Patel
England: Andrew Strauss (capt), Kevin Pietersen, Jonathan Trott, Ian Bell, Paul Collingwood, Matt Prior (wkt), Michael Yardy, Tim Bresnan, Graeme Swann, Ajmal Shahzad, James Anderson.