The life and legend of Tendulkar

For a reluctant public speaker, Sachin Tendulkar's measure of words and timing of delivery today would be only a whit lower in impact than when he plays one of his exquisite straight drives.

I remember him as a man with monosyllabic responses to queries, but today he is a seasoned raconteur, with a sharp memory and more importantly a sense of humour.

Tendulkar's formal education was truncated just after finishing school, but he appears to have learnt well from the 'university of life'. At the release of Shadows Across the Playing Fields (a book on 60 years of India-Pakistan cricket co-authored by Shashi Tharoor andShaharyar Khan) the other night, he had the audience in thrall with memories of his introduction to international cricket. Hesent me 20hurtling years back in time.

I was on that eventful tour of Pakistan in 1989, and remember the callow 16-year-old being the focus of attention of everybody -- not the least Pakistan's dreaded pace attack led by Imran Khan and including Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis. Though a raw youngster, for psychological reasons, he was the obvious target for the Pakistan team.

Ten months earlier Tendulkar had not been chosen for the tour of the West Indies despite scoring centuries in his first Ranji, Duleep and Irani Trophy matches because the selectors feared he might be hit by pace bowlers and lose confidence permanently. But in many ways -- some of which have been examined by Tharoor and Shaharyar in the book -- a tour of Pakistan was even more daunting.

Tendulkar recalled how jittery he was before his first innings, but I can vouch his teammates were perhaps even more nervous. Concern over Tendulkar reached a crescendo on the eve of the final Test at Sialkot when it was discovered that the young player would not just talk, but often also walk in his sleep.

Manager Borde, whose room would often become the hub for hacks in the evenings to sniff out stories, was most distraught. "Ab kya hoga?'' he asked the clueless press corps. As a precaution, I suspect he moved into the room adjoining Tendulkar's and kept vigil.

Tendulkar had enjoyed a modest tour till then, and then faced a trial by fire in the last Test when he was felled by a vicious bouncer from Waqar Younis. There was blood on the pitch as he swooned briefly from the blow, but got only muted commiserations from Imran Khan who saw this as a decisive psychological moment to win the series.

But Tendulkar was unfazed, and after some quick-fix remedy by the physio, was back into his stance. The next delivery from Waqar was sent scorching through the covers for a boundary. Imran's moment to put India on the mat had come and gone in a flash. Tendulkar had sealed his brilliant script with destiny forever.

It's almost 20 years since that day, and the marvel about Tendulkar is now not so much about his record-breaking feats as his longevity. Heck, twenty years transcends a couple of generations at least. There have been 15 cricketers who have played 20 years or more and in the early 20th century, England's Wilfred Rhodes's career stretched to a whopping 30 years and 315 days, but nobody has had the workload as Tendulkar who has played 159 Tests and 425 one day internationals.

This makes for arguably the most extraordinary story in Indian sport, and while every fact is well known, is still only half told. The other half should come from the man himself. For the sake of posterity, I insist, Tendulkar must start living his life again, as it were.

Ayaz Menon on Tendulkar's 20 years

Sachin Tendulkar completes 20 years in international cricket today. He made his Test debut against Pakistan at Karachi as a callow 16-year-old with a mop of fuzzy hair, a squeaky voice and a world record already under his belt.

Those with a penchant for seeing things through the prism of history might remember that this happened less than a week after the collapse of the Berlin Wall and less than three weeks before VP Singh was chosen Prime Minister of India to usher in the era of coalition politics.

In almost every which way, the world has changed for India since then, except for one constant: the sight of a 5 foot 5 inch batsman walking out with his inordinately heavy bat, doing duty for the country, carrying the burden of expectations of a billion people.

Barely a dozen players in the history of cricket have played that long but nobody has spent as many days on the field playing for his country with such remarkable consistency and virtuosity that the oft-abused definition 'genius' finds credence.

Three events early in his career convinced me of his mettle even before he had played for India. Almost 18 months before he made his international debut I went to see him bat in a school match at the Cricket Club of India in early 1988. He had by then already announced his arrival to the world with the 664 runs partnership with schoolmate Vinod Kambli, but journalists are skeptics by nature and I was seeking further vindication of his talent.

By the time I reached the ground Tendulkar was already past the three figure mark and striking the ball with gusto. To stem the flow of runs the fielding captain pushed his fielders deep prompting Tendulkar to change his tactics: from hitting lusty boundaries, he began pushing for singles and twos. When the fielding captain brought the field in again, he started hitting over the top again.

"This boy is destined for greatness,'' quipped the late Raj Singh Dungarpur, Indian cricket's eternal romantic."Batting is about making runs, but even more about knowing how to make runs." At 15, Tendulkar seemed to know this better than those who may have played a lifetime.

Some months later he made a hundred on debut in the Ranji Trophy, Duleep Trophy and Irani trophy and was on everybody's short list for the impending tour of the West Indies in early 1989. But when the team was announced, his name was missing.

On the eve of the team's departure, actor Tom Alter and I were to interview skipper Dilip Vengsarkar for a sports video and thought it would be a good idea to include a section with the young cricketer too. Tendulkar was visibly chagrined at his omission in spite of his prolific run-getting in the domestic tournaments.

"The selectors wanted to protect you from Marshall and Walsh,'' Tom and I told him. This appeared to rile him even further. "I'm not afraid of pace,'' he shot back, bristling with barely concealed unhappiness. "If I am hit, I will only learn faster.''

In his first series in Pakistan, in the final Test at Sialkot, he was struck on the nose by Waqar Younis. After the bleeding was arrested, he was back in his stance with determination multiplied manifold. Waqar's next delivery was hit through the covers for a boundary. A psychological threshold had been crossed.

Over the next few years, Tendulkar was to be acknowledged the world over as a cricketer who belonged to the 'rarest of rare' categories. In the 20 odd years since I have rarely seen him relax or take his success for granted. But I will desist from discussing his batting exploits here in any detail. These are easily available everywhere -- the fours, sixes, strike rate - all the stats anybody wants to know, though these are inadequate to convey the quality of his batsmanship.

Is Tendulkar the greatest batsman of all time? Since no other batsman has finished with a Test career average of even 75, leave aside 99.94, Bradman in that respect brooks no competition. Is he the best batsman of his generation? Likely, though Brian Lara and Ricky Ponting will have so many votaries that no clear conclusion is possible. Has he been better than Ranji, Trumper, Hobbs, Hammond, Hutton, the three Ws, Kanhai, Gavaskar, Border, Miandad, G Chappell - to name a few -- who have illuminated the spectrum of batsmanship through the past 150 years? I suspect there will be pros and cons in this debate too.

I would say, though, that Tendulkar must rate amongst the top 10 batsmen of all time in terms of technical certitude, style and consistency. He has scored the most runs and centuries in Tests and ODIs which in itself is enough to establish a giant. He would straddle across the game's history with his greatness unquestioned in any era, and be part of any team any time. The only bleak part in a glittering career would be his nondescript captaincy.

But to measure Tendulkar's impact only through runs, centuries and average is to assess him only as a cricketer and ignore an extraordinary sociological phemonenon. In a birthday tribute in these columns last year I wrote of the indelible impact he has had on the Indian psyche:

"Like cinema and politics, cricket is wholly integrated into Indian life. Tendulkar not only filled up stadiums around the country with his dynamic batsmanship, but also filled the nation with hope. At the physical level, he was playing sport, at a subliminal level he was nurturing the ambitions of a young country that was breaking its shackles from a restrictive past.'' If anything, my belief has since become stronger.

Indeed, I dare add that if Tendulkar were not around, the match-fixing controversy could have debilitated the game in the Indian sub-continent. It was primarily because of his personal and professional credibility (and by extension, of players like Ganguly, Dravid, Kumble) that Indian cricket could emerge from that crisis relatively unaffected.

Equally remarkably, for all his phenomenal fame, all the glory and the wealth that has come his way, Tendulkar retains his humility and childlike enthusiasm for the game still. He is shy -- a man of many strokes but few words -- preferring to let his bat do the talking. But when he does speak or take a position, however, the world listens, as happened in the Harbhajan Singh controversy in Australia in 2008.

Tendulkar has frequently been compared to Don Bradman. This has its genesis in Bradman himself revealing in the late 90s that he saw shades of himself in Tendulkar's batting. But for me the greater similarity is in the influence they have wielded on the game and their respective countries despite the enormous pressures of public expectation.

No two wickets in the history of the game have been as coveted by opposing teams; no two wickets have meant so much for so many people for so long. Through their batting excellence, Bradman and Tendulkar not only established the identity of their respective nations but helped millions of their countrymen find their identity too.

The poet-writer CP Surendran wrote once somewhere: "Batsmen walk into the middle alone. Not Tendulkar. Every time Tendulkar walks out to the crease, a whole nation, tatters and all, marches with him to the battle arena. A pauper people pleading for relief, remission from the lifelong anxiety of being India, by joining in spirit with their visored saviour.''

That, I believe, is the true essence of Sachin Tendulkar.

Man-child superstar by Rahul Bhattacharya

Sachin Tendulkar comes to the ground in headphones. He might make a racket in the privacy of the bus, who knows, but when he steps out he is behind headphones. Waiting to bat he is behind his helmet. The arena is swinging already to the chant, "Sachin, Sachin", the first long and pleading, the second urgent and demanding, but Tendulkar is oblivious, behind his helmet.

At the fall of the second wicket, that familiar traitorous roar goes round the stadium, at which point Tendulkar walks his slow walk out, golden in the sun, bat tucked under the elbow. The gloves he will only begin to wear when he approaches the infield, to busy himself against distraction from the opposition. Before Tendulkar has even taken guard, you know that his quest is equilibrium.

As he bats his effort is compared in real time with earlier ones. Tendulkar provides his own context. The conditions, the bowling attack, his tempo, his very vibe, is assessed against an innings played before.Today he reminds me of the time when … Why isn't he …. What's wrong with him!

If the strokes are flowing, spectators feel something beyond pleasure. They feel something like gratitude. The silence that greets his dismissal is about the loudest sound in sport. With Tendulkar the discussion is not how he got out, but why. Susceptible to left-arm spin? To the inswinger? To the big occasion? The issue is not about whether it was good or not, but where does it rank? A Tendulkar innings is never over when it is over. It is simply a basis for negotiation. He might be behind headphones or helmet, but outside people are talking, shouting, fighting, conceding, bargaining, waiting. He is a national habit.

But Tendulkar goes on. This is his achievement, to live the life of Tendulkar. To occupy the space where fame and accomplishment intersect, akin to the concentrated spot under a magnifying glass trained in the sun, and remain unburnt.

"Sachin is God" is the popular analogy. Yet god may smile as disease, fire, flood and Sreesanth visit the earth, and expect no fall in stock. For Tendulkar the margin for error is rather less. The late Naren Tamhane was merely setting out the expectation for a career when he remarked as selector, "Gentlemen, Tendulkar never fails." The question was whether to pick the boy to face Imran, Wasim, Waqar and Qadir in Pakistan. Tendulkar was then 16.

Sixteen and so ready that precocity is too mild a word. He made refinements, of course, but the marvel of Tendulkar is that he was a finished thing almost as soon as began playing.

The maidans of Bombay are dotted with tots six or seven years old turning out for their coaching classes. But till the age of 11, Tendulkar had not played with a cricket ball. It had been tennis- or rubber-ball games at Sahitya Sahwas, the writers' co-operative housing society where he grew up, the youngest of four cricket-mad siblings by a distance. The circumstances were helpful. In his colony friends he had playmates, and from his siblings, Ajit in particular, one above Sachin but older by 11 years, he had mentorship.

It was Ajit who took him to Ramakant Achrekar, and the venerable coach inquired if the boy was accustomed to playing with a "season ball" as it is known in India. The answer did not matter. Once he had a look at him, Achrekar slotted him at No. 4, a position he would occupy almost unbroken through his first-class career. In his first two matches under Achrekar Sir, he made zero and zero.

Memory obscures telling details in the dizzying rise thereafter. Everybody remembers the 326 not out in the664-run gig with Kambli. Few remember the 346 not out in the following game, the trophy final. Everyone knows the centuries on debut in the Ranji Trophy and Irani Trophy at 15 and 16. Few know that he got them in the face of a collapse in the first instance and virtually out of partners in the second. Everyone knows his nose was bloodied by Waqar Younis in that first Test series, upon which he waved away assistance. Few remember that he struck the next ball for four.

This was Tendulkar five years after he'd first handled a cricket ball.

Genius, they say, is infinite patience. But it is first of all an intuitive grasp of something beyond the scope of will - or, for that matter, skill. In sportspersons it is a freakishness of the motor senses, even a kind of ESP.

	The wonder is that in the years between he has done nothing to sully his innocence, nothing to deaden the impish joy, nothing to disrupt the infinite patience or damage the immaculate equilibrium through the riot of his life and career

Tendulkar's genius can be glimpsed without him actually holding a bat. Not Garry Sobers' equal with the ball, he is nevertheless possessed of a similar versatility. He swings it both ways, a talent that eludes several specialists. He not only rips big legbreaks but also lands his googlies right, a task beyond some wrist spinners. Naturally he also bowls offspin, usually to left-handers and sometimes during a spell of wrist spin. In the field he mans the slips as capably as he does deep third man, and does both in a single one-dayer. Playing table tennis he is ambidextrous. By all accounts he is a brilliant, if hair-raising, driver. He is a champion Snake player on the cellphone, according to Harbhajan Singh, whom he also taught a spin variation.

His batting is of a sophistication that defies generalisation. He can be destroyer or preserver. Observers have tried to graph these phases into a career progression. But it is ultimately a futile quest for Tendulkar's calibrations are too minute and too many to obey compartmentalisation. Given conditions, given his fitness, his state of mind, he might put away a certain shot altogether, and one thinks it is a part of his game that has died, till he pulls it out again when the time is right, sometimes years afterwards. Let alone a career, in the space of a single session he can, according to the state of the rough or the wind or the rhythm of a particular bowler, go from predatorial to dead bat or vice versa.

Nothing frustrates Indians as much as quiet periods from Tendulkar, and indeed often they are self-defeating. But outsiders have no access to his thoughts. However eccentric, they are based on a heightened cricket logic rather than mood. Moods are irrelevant to Tendulkar. Brian Lara or Mohammad Azharuddin might be stirred into artistic rage. Tendulkar is a servant of the game. He does not play out of indignation nor for indulgence. His aim is not domination but runs. It is the nature of his genius.

The genius still doesn't explain the cricket world's enchantment with Tendulkar. Ricky Ponting and Jacques Kallis are arguably not lesser cricketers than he, but have nothing like his following or presence. Among contemporaries only Shane Warne could draw an entire stadium's energy towards himself, but then Warne worked elaborately towards this end. Tendulkar on the pitch is as uncalculated as Warne was deliberate. Warne worked the moments before each delivery like an emcee at a title fight. Tendulkar goes through a series of ungainly nods and crotch adjustments. Batting, his movements are neither flamboyant nor languid; they are contained, efficient. Utility is his concern. Having hit the crispest shot between the fielders he can still be found scurrying down the wicket, just in case.

Likewise, outside the pitch nothing he does calls up attention. In this he is not unusual for the times. It has been, proved by exceptions of course, the era of the undemonstrative champion. Ali, Connors, McEnroe, Maradona have given way to Sampras, Woods, Zidane, Federer, who must contend with the madness of modern media and sanitisation of corporate obligation.

Maybe Tendulkar the superstar, like Tendulkar the cricketer, was formed at inception. Then, as now, he is darling. He wears the big McEnroe-inspired curls of his youth in a short crop, but still possesses the cherub's smile and twinkle. Perhaps uniquely, he is granted not the sportstar's indulgence of perma-adolescence but that of perma-childhood. A man-child on the field: maybe it is the dichotomy that is winning. The wonder is that in the years between he has done nothing to sully his innocence, nothing to deaden the impish joy, nothing to disrupt the infinite patience or damage the immaculate equilibrium through the riot of his life and career.

Harsha Unplugged

Author's note: This piece was written 21 years ago for Sportsworld magazine (and was only retrieved thanks to Mudar Patherya, who was a young cricket writer then). Sachin Tendulkar was 15, a year and a half away from playing Test cricket and four months short of his first-class debut. I was not yet 27, in an advertising job out of business school, with one Test match and a handful of one-dayers on Doordarshan behind me. We were both looking ahead in our own spheres. What a time it was, it was, a time of innocence...

	"Once I get set, I don't think of anything" © Unknown
Related Links Players/Officials: Vinod Kambli | Sachin Tendulkar Teams: India

All of Bombay's maidans are a stage. Where every cricketer has a role to play. And his seems to be the blockbuster. Ever since he unveiled Act One early last year, audiences have been waiting, a little too eagerly at times, to watch the next scene. Sachin Tendulkar is only, so far, acting in a high-school production. Yet critics have gone to town. And rave reviews have not stopped coming in.

I guess it can only happen in Bombay. That a schoolboy cricketer sometimes becomes the talk of the town. Why, at the end of every day's play in the final of Bombay's Harris Shield (for Under 17s) everybody wanted to know how many he had made. For he does bat three days sometimes! And for all the publicity he has received, Sachin Tendulkar is really still a kid. He only completed 15 on 24 April. And is very shy. Opening out only after you have coaxed him for some time. As his coach Mr Achrekar says, "Aata thoda bolaila laglai" [He's started talking a bit now]. And it's then that you realise that his voice has not yet cracked.

His record is awesome. He has scored far more runs than all of us scored looking dreamily out of the window in a boring Social Studies class when we were his age.

For a prodigy, he started late. When he was nine years old. And it was only in 1984-85 that he scored his first school-level fifty. But 1985-86 was a little better. He scored his first Harris Shield hundred and played for Bombay in the Vijay Merchant (Under-15) tournament. And 1986-87 was when he blossomed. Still only 13, he led his school, Shardashram Vidyamandir, to victory in the Giles Shield (for Under-15s). He scored three centuries - 158*, 156 and 197 - and then in the Harris Shield scored 276, 123 and 150. In all, he scored nine hundreds, including two double hundreds, a total of 2336 runs.

By now everyone had begun to sit up and take notice. The beginning of the 1987-88 season saw Sachin at the Ranji nets. Once again the top players were away playing Tests and perhaps the Bombay selectors felt it wouldn't be a bad idea to give Sachin first-hand experience of a higher category of cricket. He was named in the 14 for the first couple of games, and manager Sandeep Patil kept sending him out whenever possible - for a glass of water or a change of gloves. All along Sachin probably knew that he was still at best a curiosity, and that while Bombay was giving him every blooding opportunity, he had to prove himself on the maidans.

And that is exactly what he did. Season 1987-88 was a purple patch that never ended. Playing in the Vijay Merchant tournament he scored 130 and 107 and then at the Inter-Zonal stage he made 117 against the champions, East Zone. Then in the Vijay Hazare tournament (for Under-17s) he scored 175 for West Zone against champions East Zone.

Then came the avalanche. A 178* in the Giles Shield and a sequence in the Harris Shield of 21*, 125, 207*, 329* and 346*! A small matter of 1028 runs in five innings! And in the course of that innings of 329* he set the much talked-about record of 664 for the third wicket with Vinod Kambli, who, it is not always realised, scored 348*. Perhaps the most fascinating of them all was the innings of 346*. Coming immediately, as it did, in the shadow of the world record, a lot of people were curious to see him bat. Sachin ended the first day on 122, batted through the second to finish with 286, and when the innings closed around lunch on the third day, he was 346*. And then came back to bowl the first ball. In April's Bombay summer.

	"People don't realise that he is just 15. They keep calling him for some felicitation or the other. The other day he was asked to inaugurate a children's library. This is ridiculous. These things are bound to go to his head. He will start thinking he has achieved everything."Tendulkar's coach, Ramakant Achrekar

But when did this story begin? Like all children, Tendulkar took to playing "galli" cricket. His brother Ajit was a good player and persuaded Mr Achrekar, probably Bombay's most famous coach, to look at him. Achrekar recalls, "When he first came to my net four-five years ago, he looked just like any other boy and I didn't take him seriously. Then one day I saw him bat in an adjacent net. He was trying to hit every ball but I noted that he was middling all of them. Some time later he got a fifty and a friend of mine, who was umpiring that game, came and told me that this boy would play for India. I laughed at him and said that there were so many boys like him in my net. But he insisted. 'Mark my words, he will play for India.' My friend is dead now but I'm waiting to see if his prophecy comes true.'

Tendulkar is taking first steps towards getting there. He discovered that his house, being in Bandra, would not allow him to be at Shivaji Park whenever he wanted. He now spends most of his time at his uncle's house, just off this nursery of Bombay cricket. When he is not actually playing, that is.

Quite often, he is playing all day; important because it has helped him build the stamina to play long innings. "I don't get tired," he says, referring to them. "If you practise every day, you get used to it."

And what about that world-record innings? "I could bat very freely then because my partner Vinod Kambli was batting so well that I knew that even if I failed, he would get enough runs for the side."

Isn't there a lot of pressure on him now? Everyone assumes he will get a big score? "Only in the beginning. Till I get set. Once I get set, I don't think of anything."

Wasn't he thrilled at being invited to the Ranji nets? "Definitely. After playing there I got a lot of confidence."

Everything in Tendulkar's life has so far revolved around cricket. Including his choice of school. A few years back he shifted to Shardashram Vidyamandir, only so that he could come under the eye of Achrekar. "It helped me tremendously because 'sir's' guidance is so good," he says.

Strangely his parents were never very keen about cricket. His brother Ajit says, "They were not very interested in the game, though they gave him all the encouragement. You see, in our colony all parents were training their children to be engineers and doctors. And they would say, "Gallit khelun cricketer hoto kai?" [You don't become a cricketer by playing in the alleys]. I am so happy he is doing well because now people think he is doing something."

The question that arises then, given all the publicity is: Just how good is Sachin Tendulkar?

"For his age, unbelievable," says Sharad Kotnis, Bombay's veteran cricket watcher. "He is definitely comparable to Ashok Mankad, who had a similar run many years ago. But remember Ashok had cricket running in his family and his father often came to see him play. I think Tendulkar's strongest point is that he is willing to work very hard."

Luckily for Sachin, there is a calming influence over him, just so he doesn't get carried away by this acclaim. His coach Achrekar knows exactly what he is talking about. "He is not perfect yet. Far from it. In fact, I would say he is not even halfway there. He still has a lot of faults, particularly while driving through the on, which is an indicator of a class batsman. He still has a long way to go, but what I like about him is his ability to work hard. I don't think we should get carried away by his scores. After all, one has to take into account the nature of the wicket and the quality of the bowlers. By his standards the quality of the bowling he faced was not good enough.

"His real test will come this year when he plays in the 'A' Division of the Kanga League. [Sachin will play for the Cricket Club of India, which for him has waived the stipulation that children under 18 are not allowed inside the Club House!] He should get 70s and 80s there and not just 20s and 30s; particularly towards the end of the season, when the wickets get better."

	Tendulkar as a wee thing with coach Ramakant Achrekar© Unknown

Achrekar, in fact, is quite upset about the publicity Sachin is getting. "People don't realise that he is just 15. They keep calling him for some felicitation or the other. The other day he was asked to inaugurate a children's library. This is ridiculous. These things are bound to go to his head. He will start thinking he has achieved everything. I hope all this stops so he can concentrate and work hard."

Yet both Achrekar and Kotnis agree on when they think Sachin will become a Ranji regular. "I think he should be playing the Ranji Trophy next year. I think it is unfair to compare him to the [Lalchand] Rajputs and [Alan] Sippys yet, but I think he should play next year," feels Kotnis. And Achrekar adds, "Inspite of what I said about him, if he maintains this kind of progress, he should play the Ranji next year."

Clearly the curtain call is still a long way off for Sachin Tendulkar. He has a lot of things going for him. Most importantly he is in Bombay, where the sheer atmosphere can propel him ahead. In how many cities would a 15-year-old be presented a Gunn and Moore by the Indian captain? And in which other city would the world's highest run-getter write to a 15-year-old asking him not to get disheartened at not getting the Best Junior Cricketer award?

Sunil Gavaskar wrote to Tendulkar to tell him that several years earlier another youngster too had not got the award and that he didn't do too badly in Test cricket. For him the letter from his hero is a prized possession. Another great moment was a meeting with him where "… he told me that I should forget the past every time I go to bat. I should always remember that I have to score runs each time."

He is in the right company. And the right environment. The next few years will show whether he has it in him the mental toughness to overcome the over-exposure. If it does not go to his head, surely there is a great future beckoning. This is really just the beginning and I will be watching this little star with avid interest for the next three years.

If he is still charting blockbusters, I'd love to do another review then.

PETER ROEBUCK @ SMH

20 not out

November 8, 2009

SACHIN TENDULKAR will celebrate 20 years as an international in a week's time. It's a heck of a long time and it has gone in the blink of an eye.

When Tendulkar first took guard in his country's colours, the Berlin Wall had just fallen, Nelson Mandela was behind bars, Allan Border was captaining Australia and India was a patronised country known for its dust, poverty, timid batsmen and other outdated caricatures.

In those days Tendulkar was a tousle-haired cherub prepared to stand his ground against all comers, including Wasim Akram and the most menacing of the Australians, Merv Hughes. Now he is a tousle-haired elder still standing firm, still driving and cutting, still retaining some of the impudence of youth but nowadays bearing also the sagacity of age.

It has been an incredible journey, a trip that figures alone cannot define.

Not that the statistics lack weight. To the contrary they are astonishing, almost mind-boggling. Tendulkar has a scored an avalanche of runs, thousands upon thousands of them in every form of the game. He has reached three figures 87 times in the colours of his country and all the while has somehow retained his freshness, somehow avoided the mechanical, the repetitive and the predictable. Perhaps that has been part of it, the ability to retain the precious gift of youth so that it is not swamped by the knowledge that time alone can bring. Alongside Shane Warne, Tendulkar has been the most satisfying cricketer of his generation.

The Indian master's feats are prodigious. He has scored as many runs overseas as in his backyard, has flogged Brett Lee at his fastest and Warne at his most obtuse, has flourished against swing and cut, prospered in damp and dry. Nor can his record be taken for granted. Batsmen exist primarily to score runs. It is a damnably difficult task made to look easy by a handful of expert practitioners. Others have promised and fallen back, undone by the demands, unable to meet the moment. Tendulkar has kept going, hunger unabated.

In part he has lasted so long because there has been so little inner strain. It's hard to think of a player remotely comparable who has spent so little energy conquering himself. Throughout he has been able to concentrate on overcoming his opponents.

But it has not only been about runs. Along the way Tendulkar has provided an unsurpassed blend of the sublime and the precise. In him, the technical and the natural sit side by side, friends not enemies, allies deep in conversation.

Romantics talk about those early morning trips to Shivaji Park in Mumbai, and the child eager to erect the nets and anxious to bat until someone took his wicket. They want to believe that toil alone can produce that straight drive and a bat so broad that periodically it is measured. But it was not like that.

From the start the lad had an uncanny way of executing his strokes perfectly. His boyhood coaches insist that their role was to ensure that he remained unspoilt. Sensing that he knew the game inside out, they were wise enough to leave him to his own devices, let him work it out for himself. There was no apprenticeship. Tendulkar was born to bat.

Over the decades it has been Tendulkar's rare combination of mastery and boldness that has delighted connoisseurs and crowds alike. More than any other batsman, even Brian Lara, Tendulkar's batting has provoked gasps of admiration. A single withering drive dispatched along the ground eluding the bowler, placed unerringly between fieldsmen, could provoke wonder even among the oldest hands. A solitary square cut was enough to make a spectator's day. Tendulkar might lose his wicket cheaply but he is incapable of playing an ugly stroke. His defence might have been designed by Christopher Wren. And alongside these muscular orthodoxies could be found ornate flicks through the on-side, glides off his bulky pads that sent tight deliveries dashing on unexpected journeys into the back and beyond. Viv Richards could terrorise an attack with pitiless brutality, Lara could dissect bowlers with surgical and magical strokes, Tendulkar can take an attack apart with towering simplicity.

Nor has Tendulkar ever stooped to dullness or cynicism. Throughout his wits have remained sharp and originality has been given its due. He has, too, been remarkably constant.

In those early appearances, he relished the little improvisations calculated to send bowlers to the madhouse, cheeky strokes that told of ability and nerve. For a time thereafter he put them into the cupboard, not because respectability beckoned or responsibility weighed him down but because they were not required. Shot selection, his very sense of the game, counts among his strengths. On his most recent trip to Australia, though, he decided to restore audacity, cheekily undercutting lifters, directing the ball between fieldsmen, shots the bowlers regarded as beyond the pale. Even in middle age he remains unbroken.

And yet, even this, the runs, the majesty, the thrill, does not capture his achievement. Reflect upon his circumstances and then marvel at his longevity. Here is a man obliged to put on disguises so that he can move around the streets, a fellow able to drive his cars only in the dead of night for fear or creating a commotion, a father forced to take his family holidays in Iceland because he might escape recognition in those parts, a person whose entire adult life has been lived in the eye of a storm.

Throughout he has been public property, India's proudest possession, a young man and yet also a source of joy for millions, a sportsman and yet, too, an expression of a vast and ever-changing nation. Somehow he has managed to keep the world in its rightful place. Somehow he has raised children who relish his company and tease him about his batting. Whenever he loses his wicket in the 90s, a not uncommon occurrence, his oldest asks why he does not ''hit a sixer''.

Somehow he has emerged with an almost untarnished reputation. Inevitably mistakes have been made. Something about a car, something else about a cricket ball and suggestions that he had stretched the facts to assist his pal Harbhajan Singh. But then he is no secular saint. It's enough that he is expected to bat better than anyone else. It's hardly fair to ask him to match Mother Teresa as well. At times India has sprung too quickly to his defence, as if a point made against him was an insult to the nation, as if he was beyond censure. A poor LBW decision against him - and he has had his allotment - can all too easily be turned into a cause celebre. Happily, Tendulkar has always retained his equanimity. He is a sportsman as well as a cricketer. By no means has it been the least of his contributions and it explains his standing in the game.

And there has been another quality that has sustained him, a trait whose importance cannot be overstated. Not long ago Keith Richards was asked how the Rolling Stones had spent so many decades on the road, made so many records, put up with so much attention. His reply was as simple as it as telling. ''We love it, we just love playing,'' he explained. And so it has always has been with Tendulkar. It's never been hard for him to play cricket. The hard part will be stopping. But he will take into retirement a mighty record and the knowledge that he has given enormous pleasure to followers of the game.

Dilip Premchandran @ Guardian

To play's the thing – the enthusiasm that makes Sachin Tendulkar great
India's star batsman is as happy piling up runs in Cuttack as scoring a century at Lord's

India's Sachin Tendulkar, right, plays a shot on his way to an unbeaten 96 as Sri Lanka's captain and wicketkeeper, Kumar Sangakkara, watches during their third one-day international cricket match in Cuttack. Photograph: Arko Datta/Reuters
One of the advantages of having a partner who isn't especially interested in sport comes in the form of observations that are stripped bare of the fake patinas that we aficionados love to add on. Soon after Sachin Tendulkar's unbeaten 96 had guided India to the easiest of victories in Cuttack, I was thinking out loud: "How does he still motivate himself to go to such venues and score runs?" She looked perplexed for a moment. "Don't people go to watch the games there?" she asked. "Do they pay less money to get in?"
Touché. When you follow a sport like cricket, steeped in tradition, it's easy to succumb to what I call the Houses-of-the-Holy syndrome. When a batsman makes a century or a bowler bowls a game-changing spell at a venue like Lord's, the MCG, Eden Gardens, the Wanderers or the Kensington Oval, there's a tendency to imbue it with mythical qualities. A hundred made at the Barabati Stadium or the Arbab Niaz in Peshawar isn't viewed in quite the same rose-tinted way.
Tendulkar, though, scoffs at this particular form of snobbery. For years now, he has been a disciple of the first commandment that the great Bill Shankly preached; that it's "their [the players'] privilege to play for you [the fans]". Unlike the big-time Charlies who came to English football and became mice among men during trips to the wintry wastes of Wearside and north Lancashire, he has made it his business to score runs wherever he goes.
His 45 one-day hundreds have been distributed across 31 different venues, with Colombo's Premadasa Stadium having been witness to four, including his first way back in 1994. The 43 Test centuries have been spread across 30 venues. Apart from the absence of a Test hundred in Zimbabwe and a limited-overs one in the Caribbean, there are no gaps in the résumé.
In 2009, despite India's threadbare Test schedule and being absent from a few one-day games, he has already amassed 1,505 runs, 964 of them in coloured clothes. Each of the three one-day centuries has been memorable. The 163 not out in Christchurch lit the touchpaper for a tour of New Zealand from which India returned triumphant in both forms of the game. In Colombo in September, he scored 138 from 133 balls to win a tri-nation tournament. And at Hyderabad two months later, he produced one of his greatest-ever innings (175 from 141 balls) against the side that he has always saved his best for, Australia. Unfortunately for him, the rest of the team chose that day to emulate some of their spineless predecessors, falling down in an ugly heap around him.
There were some murmurs of dissent from fans the other night, with poor Dinesh Karthik being skewered for not being more scoreboard-conscious. But the old-timers in Cuttack had already seen him make a hundred, more than a decade ago, in an era when the old firm of Tendulkar and Kambli was expected to lead India to World Cup glory.
Tendulkar himself won't lose sleep over a landmark missed. He has more important things on his mind, like another World Cup on the subcontinent. He was just starting to obliterate school records when Graeme Gooch swept India out in the semi-final of 1987, and nine years later, his magnificent riposte after Aravinda de Silva's minor masterpiece on a minefield of a pitch was largely forgotten because of the collapse and rioting that followed.
Perhaps no other cricketer has been so conscious of the legacy that he leaves behind. Having saved a Test match at Old Trafford as a 17-year-old, he then had to endure a decade of veiled insinuations that his batting wasn't really up to snuff in moments of crisis. Despite averaging 10 runs more in the fourth innings of matches than Steve Waugh – did anyone ever call him a choker? – Tendulkar's fallibility was constantly highlighted, with the epic 136 at Chennai in 1999 (India fell 12 runs short) the main exhibit.
It was perhaps poetic justice then that he returned to the same ground to draw a line under such loose talk. At Chennai last December India needed 387 to beat England over the final four sessions. No team had ever chased down even 300 on Indian pitches, and 246 were still needed when he came to the crease on the final morning. He walked off 317 minutes later with an unconquered 103, as India romped home with more than an hour to spare.
Another box had been ticked in Australia earlier that year, with a century and 91 ensuring that India were the last team to win the tri-series that was once such an integral part of the Australian sporting summer. But the last page still needs to be written, and that can only happen on home turf at the Wankhede Stadium on 2 April 2011.
When someone suggested a few years ago that Tom Moody wasn't a big enough name to coach India, a friend of mine said: "He still has two World Cup winners' medals that Tendulkar doesn't have." The man himself is acutely aware of that, and if India can solve their new-ball woes over the next 12 months, the Cinderella ending is still very much possible.
So what is it that has kept him going this long? A few years ago, when talking about his first matches in the India cap, he told me: "To be honest, I remember little of my first tour of Pakistan. I was just so excited to be part of the Indian team. I just wanted to go out and play as much as possible." When I suggested that not much had changed, he just smiled.
That boundless enthusiasm, rather than the mountains of runs and all those centuries, is at the heart of his greatness. Instead of focusing too much on that pristine back-foot punch through the covers, it's the attitude that every young player should emulate. Cuttack or Lord's, those that pay to watch deserve only the best.