Saturday 29 December 2012

'The Little Master Blaster' A tribute to the cricketing legend Sachin Tendulkar.



Born on 24th of April,Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar, is acknowledged as the greatest living batsman, and second only to Don Bradman in the all time greatest list in Test cricket. One Day Internationals (ODIs), statistics confirm that Sachin is by far the most successful batsman. In 2002, The Wisden ranked him the second greatest Test batsman of all time, behind 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 his career, 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 of Parliament 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 aviation background 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 of Health Sciences. Sachin holds the 18th rank in ICC Player Rankings for Test batsmen as of 4 December 2012. 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 the Parliament of India.
Sachin Tendulkar was conferred with the membership in the Order of Australia (AM) in Mumbai on 6 November 2012. Simon Crean, minister in the Australian cabinet, presented the award to Tendulkar. Julia Gillard, the Australian Prime Minister, was on an official visit to New Delhi in October and had announced Tendulkar's name as the latest recipient of the award. On 23 December 2012, Tendulkar announced his retirement from ODIs. Tendulkar has already stated that he will not be playing T20 Internationals.

Early life:                                                                                                                

Tendulkar was born on 24 April 1973 into a Rajapur Saraswat Brahmin family in 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 favourite music director, 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 and bullying tendencies, Ajit introduced him to cricket in 1984. 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 
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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 Indian Education Society'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.
                                                                                                
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-run partnership in a Lord Harris Shield inter-school game against Anjuman-E-Islam High School in 1988 with his friend and team-mate Vinod 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.





Career Achievements:
Sachin Tendulkar is the most prolific run scorer in one-day internationals with 18,426 runs. With a current aggregate of 15,470 Test runs, he surpassed Brian Lara's previous record tally of 11,953 runs as the highest run scorer in test matches in the second Test of Australia's 2008 tour of India in Mohali.Tendulkar described "It is definitely the biggest achievement in 19 years of my career" on the day he achieved the record. He also holds the record of highest number of centuries in both Test (51) and ODI cricket. On 16 March 2012, Tenduklar scored his 100th international hundred. It came against Bangladesh in the league matches of Asia Cup 2012. Throughout his career, he has made a strong impact on Indian cricket and was, at one time, the foundation of most of the team's victories. In recognition with his impact on sport in a cricket-loving country like India, Tendulkar has been granted the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna, Arjuna Award, Padma Shri and Padma Vibhushan by the Government of India. He was also chosen as one of the five Wisden Cricketers of the Year in 1997 and is ranked by the Wisden 100 as the second best test batsman and ODI batsman of all time.
Tendulkar has also consistently done well in Cricket World Cups. Tendulkar was the highest run scorer of the 1996 Cricket World Cup and 2003 Cricket World Cup. After his century against England during group stages of 2011 Cricket World Cup, he became the player to hit most number of centuries in Cricket World Cups with six centuries and the first player to score 2000 runs in World Cup cricket. Tendulkar has scored over 1000 runs in a calendar year in ODIs 7 times, and in 1998 he scored 1894 runs, easily the record for the highest number of runs scored by any player in a single calendar year for one day internationals. Tendulkar is also one of the very few players who are still playing in international cricket from the 1980s. On 24 February 2010, Tendulkar broke the previous world record for highest individual innings in an ODI, and became the first male cricketer to score a double-century in one-day cricket. He made 200 runs and broke the previous record of 194 runs, jointly held by Pakistan opener Saeed Anwar and Zimbabwe's Charles Coventry.
                                                                                                      
He has been Man of the Match 13 times in Test matches and Man of the Series four times, out of them twice in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy against Australia. The performances earned him respect from Australian cricket fans and players.Similarly he has been Man of the Match 60 times in One day International matches and Man of the Series 14 times.He is the leading run-scorer and century maker in Test and one-day international cricket. He is the first player to score a double century in Men's ODI cricket. He also holds the world record for playing highest number of Test and ODI matches. Tendulkar is the only cricketer to accomplish the feat of scoring a hundred centuries in international cricket which includes 49 ODI and 51 Test centuries. He is also the only player to score fifty centuries in Test cricket, and the first to score fifty centuries in all international cricket combined. On 17 October 2008, when he surpassed Brian Lara's record for the most runs scored in Test cricket, he also became the first batsman to score 12,000, 13,000, 14,000 and 15,000 runs in that form of the game, having also been the third batsman and first Indian to pass 11,000 runs in Test cricket. He was also the first player to score 10,000 runs in one-day internationals, and also the first player to cross every subsequent 1000-run mark that has been crossed in ODI cricket history. In the fourth Test of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy against Australia, Tendulkar surpassed Australia's Allan Border to become the player to cross the 50-run mark the most number of times in Test cricket history, and also the second ever player to score 11 Test centuries against Australia, tying with Sir Jack Hobbs of England more than 70 years previously.On 24 February 2010, Tendulkar became the first man to score a double century (200*) in an ODI against South Africa. On 8 November 2011, Tendulkar became the first batsman to score 15,000 runs in Test Cricket.

Individual honours and appreciations:


National honours:

  1. Padma Vibhushan, India's second highest civilian award, 2008.
  2. Maharashtra Bhushan Award, Maharashtra State's highest Civilian Award in 2001.
  3. Padma Shri, India's fourth highest civilian award, 1999.
  4. Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna, India's highest honour given for achievement in sports, 1997–98.
  5. Arjuna Award, by the Government of India in recognition of his outstanding achievement in sports, 1994.                                                              

                                                                                                                         

Other honours

  1. Wisden Leading Cricketer in the World: 2010.
  2. ICC Award-Sir Garfield Sobers trophy for cricketer of the year 2010.
  3. LG People's Choice Award: 2010.
  4. ICC World Test XI: 2009, 2010, 2011.
  5. ICC World ODI XI: 2004, 2007, 2010.
  6. Player of the tournament in 2003 Cricket World Cup.
  7. Rajiv Gandhi Awards – Sports: 2005.
  8. Wisden Cricketer of the Year: 1997.
  9. In October 2010, he was awarded for Outstanding Achievement in Sport and the Peoples Choice Award at The Asian Awards in London.
  10. On 28 January 2011, he won the 'Castrol Indian Cricketer of the Year' award.
  11. 'BCCI Cricketer of the Year' award on 31 May 2011.
  12. On 3 September 2010, he was made a Honorary Group captain by the Indian Air Force.
  13. On 11 June 2012, he was given Wisden India Outstanding Achievement award.
  14. Honorary Member of the Order of Australia, given by the Australian government on 6 November 2012.
(source: wikipedia.org)




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