Sachin Tendulkar played international cricket for 24 years and finished with more runs and more hundreds than anyone in the history of the game. He walked out for India as a 16-year-old in Karachi, scored 100 international centuries, played 200 Tests, and became the first sportsperson to receive the Bharat Ratna, the country’s highest civilian award.
Name: Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar | Born: 24 April 1973, Bombay (now Mumbai) | Sport: Cricket | Position: Right-handed top-order batter, occasional leg-spin and off-spin bowler
Shivaji Park and the Harris Shield
Tendulkar learned the game under the coach Ramakant Achrekar at Shivaji Park in Dadar, and moved to Sharadashram Vidyamandir so he could play in a stronger school side. In 1988, in a Harris Shield match against St Xavier’s High School, he and his schoolmate Vinod Kambli put on an unbroken 664 for the third wicket. Tendulkar’s share was 326 not out. The stand made both boys famous in Bombay before either had played first-class cricket, and selectors were soon watching closely.
A teenager in Pakistan
His Test debut came on 15 November 1989 at Karachi, against a Pakistan attack that included Imran Khan, Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis. He was 16 years and 205 days old. He made 15 before Waqar bowled him, and a month later he was out for nought on his one-day debut at Gujranwala. Neither failure put him off. On 14 August 1990, aged 17, he scored 119 not out at Old Trafford to save the second Test against England, his first international hundred.
The tour of Australia in 1991-92 confirmed his class, and by the middle of the decade he was opening the batting in one-day cricket, a move that changed his white-ball career. Bowlers who had planned for a middle-order player now found a short, compact batter attacking the new ball with a straight bat and a heavy blade.
World Cups and the desert
Tendulkar was the leading run-scorer at the 1996 World Cup with 523 runs, including two centuries. In April 1998 in Sharjah he played an innings against Australia that is still talked about. His 143 from 131 balls, in a Coca-Cola Cup match interrupted by a sandstorm, included five sixes. It became known simply as the Desert Storm innings.
His best World Cup came in South Africa in 2003. He scored 673 runs in 11 matches, a record for a single tournament at the time, and was named player of the tournament even though India lost the final to Australia. Eight years later, in his sixth World Cup, he finally collected a winner’s medal when India beat Sri Lanka in the final in Mumbai. He contributed 482 runs and two hundreds to that campaign.
Records that kept coming
On 24 February 2010 he became the first man to score a double century in a one-day international, making 200 not out against South Africa. On 16 March 2012, against Bangladesh at Mirpur in the Asia Cup, he reached his 100th international hundred, 51 of them in Tests and 49 in ODIs. No other batter has come close to that total.
His Test record grew steadily over two decades: 200 matches, 15,921 runs at 53.78 and a highest score of 248 not out. In one-day cricket he played 463 matches and scored 18,426 runs at 44.83. Both run totals remain the highest in the history of their formats. He played a single T20 international.
Captaincy and the Mumbai Indians years
Captaincy did not sit easily with him. He led India in 25 Tests, winning four, and in 73 one-day internationals, with 23 wins. He was far more comfortable as the senior batter in sides led by Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid and MS Dhoni, where he could concentrate on scoring runs.
In the Indian Premier League he played for the Mumbai Indians. In 2010 he scored 618 runs, the most in a season at that point, and was named player of the tournament as Mumbai reached the final.
The farewell at the Wankhede
Tendulkar retired from one-day internationals in 2012 and played his 200th and final Test against West Indies in Mumbai in November 2013. He made 74 in his only innings, and his farewell speech to the crowd at the Wankhede Stadium, thanking family, coaches and team-mates by name, is part of Indian sporting memory. Within hours of the match the government announced that he would receive the Bharat Ratna. He was the first sportsperson and the youngest person to be given it.
He was a nominated member of the Rajya Sabha from April 2012 to April 2018, and the ICC inducted him into its Hall of Fame in 2019.
Career record and honours
- Tests: 200 matches, 15,921 runs, average 53.78, 51 hundreds, 68 fifties, highest score 248 not out, 46 wickets
- One-day internationals: 463 matches, 18,426 runs, average 44.83, 49 hundreds, 96 fifties, highest score 200 not out, 154 wickets
- T20 internationals: 1 match, 10 runs, 1 wicket
- 100 international hundreds, the 100th on 16 March 2012 against Bangladesh
- First double century in men’s ODIs: 200 not out against South Africa, 24 February 2010
- World Cup winner in 2011; player of the tournament in 2003 (673 runs)
- Arjuna Award: 1994
- Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna: 1997-98
- Padma Vibhushan: 2008
- Bharat Ratna: 2014, the first sportsperson to receive it
- ICC Cricket Hall of Fame: 2019
