Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar born 24 April 1973 is an Indian cricketer widely acknowledged as the greatestbatsman in One Day Internationals and second only to Don Bradman in the all time greatest list in Test cricket.
In 2002, The Wisden ranked him the second greatest Test batsman of all time, behind Don Bradman, and the second greatest one-day-international (ODI) batsman of all time, behind Viv Richards. Tendulkar was a part of the 2011 Cricket World Cup winning Indian team in the later part of hiscareer, his first such win in six World Cup appearances for India. He was also the recipient of ” Player of the Tournament” award of the 2003 Cricket World Cup held in South Africa.
Tendulkar won the 2010 Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy for cricketer of the year at the ICC awards. He has been recommended for the receipt of the Bharat Ratna award, in fact it has been speculated that the criteria for the award of the Bharat Ratna was changed to allow him receive the award. He is also a member of Rajya Sabha ofParliament of India. Tendulkar passed 30, 000 runs in international cricket on 20 November 2009.
On 5 December 2012, Tendulkar became first batsman in history to cross the 34, 000 run aggregate in all formats of the game put together. At 36 years and 306 days, he became the first ever player to score a double-century in the history of ODIs. Two years later he became the first player to score 100 international centuries. As of December 2012, Tendulkar has played 657 matches in international cricket. Tendulkar has been honoured with the Padma Vibhushan award, India’s second highest civilian award, and the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award, India’s highest sporting honour.
He was also the first sportsperson and the first one without aviationbackground to be awarded the honorary rank of Group Captain by the Indian Air Force. Tendulkar has received honorary doctorates from University of Mysore and Rajiv Gandhi University ofHealthSciences. Sachin holds the 19th rank in ICC Player Rankings for Test batsmen as of 17 March 2013. On 1 August 2012, Sachin Tendulkar was nominated for the ICC People’s Choice award for the third time. In 2012, he was nominated to Rajya Sabha, the upper house of theParliament of India.
Sachin Tendulkar was named as an Honorary Member of the Order of Australia in 2012. [18] On 23 December 2012, Tendulkar announced his retirement from ODIs. Tendulkar has already stated that he will not be playing T20 Internationals.
Early years and personal life
Tendulkar was born on 24 April 1973 into a Rajapur Saraswat Brahminfamilyin Bombay (now Mumbai). His father Ramesh Tendulkar was a reputed Marathi novelist and his mother Rajni worked in the insurance industry. Ramesh named Tendulkar after his favouritemusicdirector, Sachin Dev Burman. Tendulkar has three elder siblings: two half-brothers Nitin and Ajit, and a half-sister Savita. They were Ramesh’s children from his first marriage. He spent his formative years in the Sahitya Sahawas Cooperative Housing Society, Bandra (East), Bombay. As a young boy, Tendulkar was considered a bully, and often picked up fights with new children in his school. He also showed an interest in tennis, idolising John McEnroe. To help curb his mischievous andbullyingtendencies, Ajit introduced him to cricket in1984.
He introduced the young Sachin to Ramakant Achrekar, a famous cricket coach of Bombay and a club cricketer of repute, at Shivaji Park, Dadar, Bombay. Achrekar was impressed with Tendulkar’s talent and advised him to shift his schooling to Sharadashram Vidyamandir (English) High School, a school at Dadar which had a dominant cricket team and had produced many notable cricketers. Prior to this, Tendulkar had attended the IndianEducationSociety’s New English School in Bandra (East). He was also coached under the guidance of Achrekar at Shivaji Park in the mornings and evenings. Tendulkar would practice for hours on end in the nets. If he became exhausted, Achrekar would put a one-rupee coin on the top of the stumps, and the bowler who dismissed Tendulkar would get the coin. If Tendulkar passed the whole session without getting dismissed, the coach would give him the coin. Tendulkar now considers the 13 coins he won then as some of his most prized possessions. He moved in with his aunt and uncle, who lived near Shivaji Park, during this period, due to his hectic schedule. Sachin Tendulkar and his wife Anjali Meanwhile at school, he developed a reputation as a child prodigy.
He had become a common conversation point in Mumbai cricketing circles, where there were suggestions already that he would become one of the greats. Besides school cricket, he also played club cricket, initially representing John Bright Cricket Club in Bombay’s premier club cricket tournament, the Kanga League, and later went on to play for the Cricket Club of India. In 1987, at the age of 14, he attended the MRF Pace Foundation in Madras (now Chennai) to train as a fast bowler, but Australian fast bowler Dennis Lillee, who took a world record 355 Test wickets, was unimpressed, suggesting that Tendulkar focus on his batting instead. A couple of months later, former Indian batsman Sunil Gavaskar gave him a pair of his own ultra light pads. ” It was the greatest source of encouragement for me,” Tendulkar said nearly 20 years later after surpassing Gavaskar’s world record of 34 Test centuries. His season in 1988 was extraordinary, with Tendulkar scoring a century in every innings he played. He was involved in an unbroken 664-runpartnership in a Lord Harris Shield inter-school game against Anjuman-E-Islam High School in 1988 with his friend and team-mateVinod Kambli, who would also go on to represent India.
The destructive pair reduced one bowler to tears and made the rest of the opposition unwilling to continue the game. Tendulkar scored 326 (not out) in this innings and scored over a thousand runs in the tournament. This was a record partnership in any form of cricket until 2006, when it was broken by two under-13 batsmen in a match held at Hyderabad in India. On 24 May 1995, at the age of 22, Tendulkar married Anjali, a paediatrician and daughter of Gujarati industrialist Anand Mehta and British social worker Annabel Mehta.
Anjali is six years his senior. They have two children, Sara (born 12 October 1997) and Arjun (born 24 September 1999). Arjun, a left handed batsman, has recently been included in under-14 probables list of Mumbai Cricket Association for off-season training camp. In January 2013 he was selected in mumbai under-14 team for the west zone league
Beliefs
Tendulkar is known to be a religious person, and an ardent devotee of Sathya Sai Baba of Puttaparthi. He has visited Puttaparthi on several occasions to seek Baba’s blessings. In 1997, Tendulkar captained the Indian National side, playing against a World Eleven team, in the Unity Cup which was held at the hill view stadium in Puttaparthi, in Baba’s presence. After Sai Baba’s death, Tendulkar broke into tears when he saw the body of Baba in Puttaparthi, and cancelled his birthday celebrations. The cricketer is also known to celebrate Ganesh Chaturthi at home and frequently visits temples during night when it is calm and quiet. The cricketer has also offered his prayers at several other Hindu temples across the country.
Early domestic career
On 14 November 1987, Tendulkar was selected to represent Bombay in the Ranji Trophy, India’s premier domestic first-class crickettournament, for the 1987–88 season. However, he was not selected for the final eleven in any of the matches. A year later, on 11 December 1988, aged just 15 years and 232 days, Tendulkar made his debut for Bombay against Gujarat at home and scored 100 not out in that match, making him the youngest Indian to score a century on first-class debut.
He was handpicked to play for the team by the then Mumbai captain Dilip Vengsarkar after watching him easily negotiating India’s best fast bowler at the time, Kapil Dev, in theWankhede Stadium nets,[1] where the Indian team had come to play against the touring New Zealand team. He followed this by scoring a century in his first Deodhar and Duleep Trophies, which are also Indian domestic tournaments. Tendulkar finished the 1988–89 season as Bombay’s highest run-scorer. He also made an unbeaten century in the Irani Trophy match against Delhi at the start of the 1989–90 season, playing for the Rest of India. In 1992, at the age of 19, Tendulkar became the first overseas-born player to represent Yorkshire, which prior to Tendulkar joining the team, never selected players even from other English counties. Selected for Yorkshire as a replacement for the injuredAustralian fast bowler Craig McDermott, Tendulkar played 16 first-class matches for the county and scored 1070 runs at an average of 46. 52. His first double century was for Mumbai while playing against the visiting Australian team at the Brabourne Stadium in 1998. He is the only player to score a century in all three of his domestic first-class debuts.
International career
Early career
Raj Singh Dungarpur is credited for the selection of Tendulkar for the Indian tour of Pakistan in late 1989, and that also after just one first class season. The Indian selection committee had shown interest in selecting Tendulkar for the tour of the West Indies held earlier that year, but eventually did not select him, as they did not want him to be exposed to the dominant fast bowlers of the West Indies so early in his career.
