Sachin Tendulkar

Thirty eight years ago, Ramesh and Rajini Tendulkar had another addition to their household. They had a boy whom they would name Sachin, after Ramesh’s favourite musician Sachin Dev Burman. Little did they know then that their kid was going to become India’s most prized possession and many parents were going to name their kids after their boy.

Also Read: The Sachin Tendulkar Curse!

At 38, Sachin Tendulkar is not just a sportsman. He is a phenomenon! There is not a day that passes when you don’t hear the name Sachin or without seeing him on various hoardings or on advertisements on television. There is no limit to the expectation he generates when he walks into bat and the country’s productivity takes a beating when he is at the crease. To call Sachin a revelation would still be an understatement!

Tendulkar first started playing serious cricket at the age of eleven where he was placed under the watchful eyes of Ramakant Achrekar, Mumbai’s most sought after coach at that time. Achrekar immediately spotted the talent in the kid and made him switch schools so that he could play more cricket. At 14, Sachin was already making headlines in the Mumbai newspapers after he combined with childhood pal Vinod Kambli to make a record 664 run partnership in a school match. An year later, he had centuries on Ranji, Irani and Duleep Trophy debut – a treble that is yet to be emulated. A few months later he was facing the likes of Waqar Younis, Imran Khan and Abdul Qadir on Pakistani soil in Indian colours. And he was all of sixteen!

Since then, the earth has completed 22 revolutions around the sun, mobile phones and Internet became a household commodity, Diego Maradona went from being Argentina’s captain to Argentina’s coach but Sachin continues to don the Indian colours.

Sachin has transformed from being the kid that got his nose bloodied in his debut Test to being a monster – tiny in size but with a huge appetite! An insatiable hunger for runs has fetched him over 30,000 runs and nearly a century of centuries but he shows no signs of stopping! He has had critics behind his back for not scoring runs when it matters the most. True that he doesn’t have a century in a World Cup final or semifinal but it can easily be forgotten that he was the leading run scorer in the 1996 and 2003 World Cups apart from being the second highest in 2011.

Tendulkar with the bat is as elegant as a wizard with a wand! Like wine, he has gotten better with age and at 38, he is batting as good as he ever did. He has the ability to stop a million heartbeats when he hits the ball high up in the air! And when the ball lands safe, the world suddenly seems a better place!

Tags: Cricket, Cricketer, India, Mumbai, Sachin Tendulkar, World Cup