A well-mannered, focussed legend

Australian great Steve Waugh has referred to the Indian maestro as the `(Don) Bradman of our times'.

Some of the world’s greatest cricketers have heaped praise on Sachin Tendulkar as he reaches another milestone in his career with former Australian skipper Steve Waugh paying him the ultimate tribute by calling him the “Bradman of our times“.

A day before completing 20 years of international cricket, Tendulkar’s peers doffed their hats to the batting genius, recalling their association with him.

“The last time I watched Sachin was last week when he was on his way to a spectacular 175 and once again I felt that I was watching a player who comes but once in a century. It can be said that he is the Bradman of our times and I do feel privileged to have played a lot of cricket against him,” Waugh said in his tribute.

Considered a ruthless and aggressive captain, Waugh said even he had a nightmarish time setting his fielders whenever Tendulkar marched in to the crease.

“Sachin always brought with him an amazing sporting presence. It was a captain’s nightmare to set a field for him when he was in full flow. It was akin to getting stuck in a tornado - the noise made it impossible to communicate with the fielders.

“The bowlers looked demoralized and you could sense that Sachin himself was delighted at the disarray he created in the opposition. Whether in India or elsewhere, there were always enough fans to create a deafening din whenever he was at his best,” he said in an article.

The man who called sledging mental disintegration, Waugh said the tactic never really worked in Tendulkar’s case.

“On his day Sachin could take a game away from under your nose very quickly. His uncanny ability to find gaps, his running between the wickets and his sheer presence at the wicket was unsettling for the opposition.

“Sachin rarely got into verbal duels and soon we too realised that sledging him only strengthens his concentration and resolve. No wonder then that some of the most talkative Australians went quiet when Sachin was in the middle.”

Waugh also lauded the way Tendulkar conducted himself off the field and said he admired the composure with which the Indian handled expectations of a cricket mad nation.

“His innate decency as always shone through his ruthlessness on the field. For most of his career, he has wanted to dominate the bowlers and stamp his supremacy on the opposition. He has always conducted himself exceptionally in public light which must not be easy.

“I know that Sachin has learnt to embrace the pressures and expectations that 1.2 billion fans place on him. He seems to thrive on their goodwill and has rarely mentioned it as a burden,” he said.

Former West Indies captain and batting legend Vivian Richards said there are few better role models in modern cricket than Tendulkar.

“When he is in full flow, the mild mannered boyish cricketer can look extremely intimidating. If there is a resonance, I find of myself in his batting, it is in that intent that he communicates,” Richards said.

Comparing Tendulkar and Brian Lara, Richards said, “If I were to make a distinction between Brian and Sachin, it would be to point that Sachin was a more committed individual. He was more consistent in his commitment to the team. Sachin is also the more disciplined cricketer between the two and perhaps that is why he is still around, 20 years after his international career.”

Former Pakistan captain Imran Khan said Tendulkar is way ahead of contemporaries like Inzamam-ul-Haq when it comes to keeping himself focussed on the game.

“Over the years Sachin has remained remarkably consistent and has more records than anybody I can remember. His talent and versatility are unquestioned which is why the only question that rankles is why he did not win enough games for his team?

“Very often he has taken his team to the brink of a famous win before getting out. If there is one area Sachin is ahead of his contemporaries, it is focus. Inzamam-ul-Haq was possibly more gifted but Sachin was more successful due to his commitment and focus.

Former India captain Sourav Ganguly said Tendulkar’s ability to adapt to the varying conditions was his biggest strength.

“His biggest strength as a batsman is his adaptability. And that is something really amazing, something so special,” he said.

Former Pakistan players also paid glowing tributes to Sachin Tendulkar, describing the champion batsman as a true ambassador of the game.

Tendulkar has been the face of Indian cricket since his Test debut as a 16-year old against Pakistan at the National stadium here in 1989 .

And former Pakistan captain and batting great Javed Miandad said he always advises the youngsters to follow in the footsteps of Tendulkar.

“We had a fearsome pace attack in Imran (Khan), Wasim (Akram), Waqar (Younis) and Saleem Jaffer but what is still etched in memory is the way he played his first ball in Test cricket.

“It was a very pacy delivery from Waqar and this young fellow came on the front foot to drive the ball. It was confidence personified. We all knew we would be hearing a lot about this youngster in years to come,” Miandad said of the batting great.

“He loves cricket and with his hardwork, focus and commitment he has truly become an outstanding ambassador for the sport at a time when commercialism is so rampant,” Miandad said.

Former Pakistan legspinner Abdul Qadir, whose duel with a young Tendulkar in an ODI at Peshawar in the 89’ series is part of cricketing folklore, said the champion batsman was far from finished and would continue to break many more records.

He said Tendulkar had outshone his illustrious compatriots with his sheer greatness and love for the game.

“I think Tendulkar has outdone all the other greats with his hunger for the game which is amazing,” Qadir said.

Tendulkar hit Qadir for three sixes in an over in the Peshawar game at a time when the legspinner was at his peak.

“That was a time when I was at my best and even the best batsmen had second thoughts coming out to hit me. I remember I kept on goading him to hit me and he took the challenge and came down to strike me cleanly. It was amazing. I knew instantly this was someone special,” he recalled.

Another former captain Inzamam-ul-Haq said Tendulkar was a gentleman personified who never allowed fame to get over him.

“What has impressed me the most about Tendulkar all these years is his humble and simple nature. I never saw him ever let the fame and adulation he enjoys get to his head,” Inzamam said.

“Whenever we played India we always knew Tendulkar was the key wicket for us it would always be a psychological blow for the Indians. His greatness is depicted in his outstanding statistics. I think it was largely due to the confidence and poise he brought to the Indian team that it had produced some many top batsmen in the modern era,” he added.

Another former captain and ex-wicketkeeper Rashid Latif said Tendulkar was a role model for the gentleman’s game.

“I had heard a lot of about him when I first played against him but what struck me was his simple nature. I don’t recall a match in which I saw him being over-aggressive, brash or sledge someone. That is what makes him such a great cricketer. He uses aggression to his own benefit,” he said.

Former wicketkeeper batsman Moin Khan said Tendulkar was a perfectionist who would be hard to replace in world cricket.

“There was perfection in his batting then and it is the same now. Obviously he is a human being and he has also failed many times but overall I don’t think I have seen a bigger batsman then him in my time,” Moin said.

The Sachin Experience

The Sachin Experience

Some time in the future, neuroscientists will perhaps have the answer. But right now it is impossible to say why there are distinctly different kinds of emotional reactions among Indian cricket fans while watching a) Sachin Tendulkar and, b) Other players.

The effect produced by a Sachin masterpiece - such as the against-all-odds 175 against Australia at Hyderabad recently - appears to be unique.

This is equally true of a Sachin failure. He doesn't just botch paddle-scoops, he plunges an entire nation of a billion-plus people into a prolonged spell of mourning. As Roger Federer said of himself, Sachin has "created a monster."

Moulding our moods

It is almost as if, as a people, we believe that we are as successful or unsuccessful as Sachin is. We owe him our ecstasy; equally, he is the cause of our despair. It is quite possible that the maestro activates a reward/punishment system in the cricket fan's brain that might be inaccessible to the lesser mortals of Indian cricket.

If you believe that this is a lot of mumbo jumbo, then take time off from watching Sachin and, instead, watch people watch him on television or in the stands. It won't take long for you to see the truth.

To be sure, there is no reference here to a particular brand of atavistic frenzy that all of us are familiar with - situations where a fired-up Tendulkar was leading run-chases and Team India was flirting with greatness against Pakistan or Australia. We will take no notice of such evolutionary excess baggage. The visceral anxieties of emotionally immature sports fans are not worth our time.

Nationalism and sport make for an explosive mix. It didn't take Hitler and the Berlin Olympics (1936) to prove this; it goes back to the very beginnings of our shared group identities.

'Peak experience'

But persist and see farther when Sachin is on song and you will slowly see the difference. Study a fan's face carefully as she goes through something similar to what Abraham Maslow described as "peak experience," even as the master makes room for a leg glance with the exquisitely refined sense of balance befitting of a Baryshnikov; or composes a consummate cover drive that Walter Hammond might have approved of. What the face registers on those occasions is nothing quite like what it might when anyone else is in action.

Awe? Admiration? Reverence? Or, is it an almost indescribable feeling that you are in the midst of something that is truly transcendental?

Whatever it is, this much is certain. If you have gone through the experience, you would be able to recall it even many, many years later.

There is a simple reason for this. When you watch Sachin at his best, the ego dies. This is not said in a mystical sense. It is not the oneness-with-the-universe phenomenon that spiritual seekers crave. It is a very material thing. The beautiful simplicity of his batting makes for an experience that shatters your ego in a sudden explosion of humility.

"Hey, someone is actually doing this," you whisper to yourself, suddenly aware of your own smallness even as it hits you, yet again, that the feat is way beyond ordinary mortals. Watch Sachin when he bats as he did in Hyderabad and you will know all about this feeling as you are carried to hitherto untrodden peaks of sports-watching experience.

"We outgrow love like other things. And put it in the drawer," wrote the poet Emily Dickinson.

It has been impossible to outgrow Indian sport's most celebrated Boy Wonder. When it comes to Sachin, at no point in our lives have we been able to say, "Ah, I've been there. I've done that."

New vistas

He has made sure that there is always some place else to go to, there is always something new to experience vis-à-vis his batting. After two long decades marked by remarkable changes in the game, that sense of wonder - Wow, how does he do it? - has not taken leave of us.

When Sachin was packing his bags to go on his maiden overseas tour - surely, he didn't need to worry about a shaving kit - to Pakistan in 1989, the Berlin Wall was still in place; reports appearing in these pages were mostly being typed on manual typewriters; apartheid was still in force in South Africa; and Pete Sampras hadn't yet won his first Grand Slam title.

Through 20 glorious years - although some of them were not quite as glorious as others - as participants in one of the country's most popular cultural rituals, Tendulkar-watching, we have noticed that his genius has been malleable enough for each of us to try and shape it to fit our own fantasies, our own imagination. Of course, as Samuel Taylor Coleridge pointed out, there is a difference between the two.

Your Sachin is a slightly different athletic/aesthetic package from your neighbour'sand so it goes on and on. No matter all this, we are all agreed on one thing: Sachin's astonishing achievements have created a new national benchmark for excellence over the last 20 years.

Peter Pan of world cricket

In recent years, we have seen him struggle, we have seen him play and miss, we have seen him fail more often. But an ageing Sachin seems impossible to imagine, perhaps because the image would render futile our own longing for immortality. Wrinkles, grey hairs and all, he is still the golden boy we first got to know of all those years ago.

Children born when he made the first of his record 42 Test centuries - a brilliant, unbeaten 119 at Old Trafford in 1990 - are now old enough to cast their votes in an election. In the event, it is time to toast the old boy again.

The Sachin Experience - there is nothing quite like it in the history of Indian sport.

An One

So who has been the best cricketer in the past 10 years?I've become fascinated to the point of obsession by a question of such incomprehensible triviality and unimportance.

Buzz up!
Digg it

Should it be Ricky Ponting? Photograph: Cameron Spencer/Getty Images

I blame Boycott. It is his fault. His fault that I can't sleep. There is a worm wriggling around inside my mind. It squirms when my head sinks into the pillow, and I lose all track of time chasing it around, until I find myself wide-awake in the small hours, staring at the curtain. This thought-worm has started to come out in the day time too. When I'm sat at my desk, staring at the screen. Or standing on the bus, shuddering in a traffic jam.


I have become fascinated to the point of obsession by a question of such incomprehensible triviality, such unequivocal unimportance, that I would be ashamed to admit my preoccupation with it to any normal person. On these pages though I feel I am in good company. Safe among a community of fellow cricket tragics. People who won't judge me for thinking these things.


As I said, it is all Boycott's fault. His, and Angus Wagstaff's. A fortnight ago or so I was listening to Boycott's podcast on Cricinfo - a sentence which, while I think of it, is as clear indication as any that I need to get out more. Wagstaff had emailed in with a question. "With the end of the decade approaching," this man Wagstaff wondered, "who do you think is the best cricketer of the decade?"


And there's the rub.


Wagstaff's poser was the rarest of things, a question which had Boycott sitting on the fence. He had drawn up a shortlist: Brian Lara, Sachin Tendulkar, Ricky Ponting, Shane Warne, Jacques Kallis, Muttiah Muralitharan and Mohammad Yousuf. But in the end he was unable to give a single answer, and plumped for a split-decision between Ricky Ponting and Jacques Kallis.


The player of the decade is not something you can judge by statistics alone. It need not be dictated by a player's personal success in terms of runs made or wickets taken. It is not necessarily related to how many matches, or series, a player won for his team. There are other issues to be considered: could they captain? Could they catch? Did they change the way the game is played? Did they change the way the it was perceived? It could hinge on character as well as achievement. The style in which they played, the entertainment they provided, the dignity and grace with which they handled themselves. Possibly they deserve the title on the strength of one epoch-defining performance alone.


More than any of those, maybe the title has to be tied to something altogether less tangible. Who best captured the spirit of the age? And what was that spirit anyway?


It's the sheer number of criteria that make the question so hard to answer. So now it is over to you, dear readers. There are only two qualifications - deeds done before 2000 don't count. The likes of Lara and Tendulkar then, can be judged only on what they have done since the turn of the century. And the question spans all forms of the game, limited and unlimited overs. How much weight you give to each of ODI, T20 and Test cricket will depend on personal preference, but these 10 years will be certainly remembered as the era when Twenty20 began to flourish and that has to be taken into account.


Ponting's case is easy to make. He has won more matches since the decade began than anybody else, 252 out of the 359 he has played in, and more runs - 2,270 - than anyone else too. If he were inclined to, no doubt Ponting could master Twenty20 cricket too. He clobbered 98* from 55 balls in the very first T20 international after all. And if he has steadily lost interest in it ever since, to the point where he has now quit the team, well maybe that only makes him a more appealing candidate to the traditionalists. But then he has lost successive Ashes tours as captain. And for me Ponting's batting is never as magical as Lara's was, or as awesome as Tendulkar's is. Did Ponting's captaincy define this era in the same way that Mark Taylor's did the 1990s?


Last Thursday you would have found any number of people willing to put forward Tendulkar's name and leave it there. That was the day he made 175 out of 347 against Australia, his 41st century of the decade (compared to Ponting's 55). Tendulkar is as famous in this era as WG Grace was in his, and, as Rob Smyth was eager to point out when I dragged him into this mess, has had to endure publicly reinventing his approach to the game as he has got older.


Kallis is less loved than either of those two, but is arguably a more gifted cricketer than either. He is the only man to average over 50 in all forms across the entire decade, a mind-boggling achievement before you even take into account the 400 wickets he has taken in that time too. But then there are plenty of cricket fans who can't stand the man. Still, no other all-rounder comes close. Except, that is, for Adam Gilchrist, the one man who could rightly claim to have redefined an aspect of the game.


How much of Shane Warne's best work was done in these last 10 years? Does the credit he gets for leading the Rajasthan Royals to the inaugural IPL title outweigh the embarrassment he suffered when he was given a drug ban for taking diuretics? Murali has taken more wickets since 2000 than Warne and Anil Kumble combined. For some folk though, Boycott among them, his bowling action automatically renders him ineligible, a criticism I find absurd.


Mohammad Yousuf broke Viv Rchards' record for most Test runs scored in a calendar year. Shiv Chanderpaul has batted like Atlas, shouldering a burden seemingly too big for any man to bear. In those 10 years Rahul Dravid has been at the crease batting for over 664 hours, which is almost 95 straight days of Test cricket. Nobody has been more entertaining then Virender Sehwag, more enthralling than Andrew Flintoff, or more redoubtable than Graeme Smith.


For the wealth of batsmen, there is scarcely a single fast-bowler among the bunch. Glenn McGrath bent the course of two entire World Cups to his will by taking 47 wickets and helping Australia stay unbeaten in both. On wickets taken alone, the No1 is Makhaya Ntini, a man who deserves more recognition than he gets. Ntini? Is this a symptom of just how confused my thinking has become?


It is 4am. The sky is lightening outside. The worm has grown longer, and coiled itself all around me. It's consuming me from the inside out. I need to go to sleep.


Help me. Please. Vote for your cricketer of the decade here.


This is an extract from The Spin, guardian.co.uk/sport's weekly take on the world of cricket. Subscribe now, it's free

Greatness

Kapil Dev has an interesting story about a young Sachin Tendulkar. I bowled a good out-swinger, he recalls, which most batsmen would have defended. But Sachin came forward and hit it flat over mid off, the ball went into the stands for a six. Kapil was stunned as the shot was completely effortless.

Today, Tendulkar is a powerful symbol of a youthful India, yet, when you look at what makes him extra special, there is a feeling that he is somewhat un-Indian. Sachin stands for sustained excellence, complete focus and relentless determination.

These are not qualities normally associated with Indians who accept mediocrity, compromise on effort and lack the edge that keeps one ahead of others. Sachin is a true champion who dominates his sport. After twenty years at the top, he is still running is like a marathon runner who finishes the race half an hour before others. During his long journey, Sachin has shattered practically every batting record but his genius cannot be reduced to statistics. Forget for a moment the million runs he has scored and the centuries smashed.

Also, ignore the minor cribs that he stumbles in tournament finals or has not scored a Test triple hundred. Instead, celebrate the joy he provides and remember the amazing pushed drive off the quicker bowlers, the powerful square cut and neat flick off his hips to square leg. For his monumental achievements, Sachin is a picture of humility even though he has every reason to be immodest. Unspoilt by fame and achievement, there is no arrogance and he remains composed even in the most competitive situations.

It is said he has time to play his shots, what is equally apparent is he displays the same sense of balance and sound judgement away from the cricket field. Gavaskar is a hero to Sachin because of his technical brilliance and Test centuries but he also admires Viv Richards for his ruthless attitude. Sachin is a mix of both — he can grind his way to Test match double hundreds and also blow away bowlers when he chooses to.

Some fault his recent careful approach in Tests, a criticism Sachin shrugs off saying these are normal changes which come about over a period of time.

Reading And Writing

Read an interesting tag idea from here.





1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry -
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Class Again

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Link text
Class

I could not think of a better title while writing this down. I had promised Naskar that I would pen something on this topic as I recently discovered that we share more than our Bengali heritage and our undying love for Manchester United - it is passionate support for the one true hero of Indian sport, Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar. This is to you, Naskar...

I recently had a small argument with a friend about how a certain Sachin Tendulkar never shows up when the Indian cricket team needs him the most. I just said - "Wait, and watch". And lo and behold - up came the two finals of the CB series and two back to back vintage Tendulkar performances which had the entire country in raptures and gave me a smug smile to show my friend.

I dont claim to remember Tendulkar's early cricket years. I got hooked to cricket in the whereabouts of the '96 world cup, when Tendulkar had recently become a phenomenon in our nation. Since then, the man has always stamped his class when he is required to. Rewind to the World Cup '96, where he blasted his way through the Curtley Ambroses, the Glenn McGraths, the Courtney Walshes, the Wasim Akrams, the Waqar Younises, the Chaminda Vaases, the Shane Warnes, the Muttaiah Mularidarans et al. He not only turned up India's highest scorer in the tournament (a feat he had accomplished in '92 also) but also the overall highest scorer. This feat was repeated in the '03 edition of the biggest tournament in which, he broke many records on the way to being the top-scorer and the player of the tournament.

The records, accolades and results kept flowing. The hurricane against Australia at Sharjah (Warney claims that Tendulkar still visits him in his nightmares), the blitz against Zimbawe and his nemesis Henry Olonga, the numerous occasions when he single-handedly decimated Pakistan's feared pace attack, the massive 186 against New Zealand in Hyderabad all showed the consistency that Tendulkar personified. To hold an average of over 40 in an Indian side which rarely made the top 4 in the world rankings (the only recognised Indian batsman with such a high career average) speaks of the man's class as does the fact that India have won a majority of their encounters when Tendulkar plays in the side.

A bout of injuries (the back problem, tennis elbow etc.) had people asking for Tendulkar's "graceful" retirement. The way the man has hit out (remember the 140 against the Windies in Malaysia?) against his detractors on the pitch, the way that he answers all who doubt his commitment and passion towards the game speaks of the hunger and passion he has for the game. The disdain with which he drives and cuts to glory, the flow of his dancing down the wicket to deliver a six over long off, the impetuous pulls and hooks, the cheeky late cuts and reverse sweeps and one the shot which he has made his own, the straight drive standing tall; all these speak of the pure class and elegance which the man possesses.

Another gem (apart from his inexhaustive talent) in Tendulkar is his modesty and his dignified conduct off-field. He does not lead a swashbuckling lifestyle unlike most other icons. He is a natural leader and has very healthy relations with his fellow players and all around him. Unselfish, unassuming and ever-positive, Tendulkar is one of the reasons cricket is still called the "gentleman's game".

After following and worshipping Tendulkar for over a decade, even now when I see him take the field, a soothing sensation runs down my spine because I know, a billion expectations are on able shoulders. And when the shots start flowing, one word involuntarily escapes my lips, "Class!"

agg