A 664-run partnership catapulted two Mumbai schoolboys to instant stardom in 1988. While one of these kids Sachin Tendulkar went on to conquer the world, the other Vinod Kambli was left to live his entire life in the shadow of his illustrated friend. Both started as wonder kids. But only one managed to fulfil his potential. Kambli was touted to be a greater talent than Sachin during initial phase of their careers. He even scored two consecutive double hundreds in Test cricket. But he vanished faster than he arrived. So many cricketers during the last twenty years have followed suit. Only Sachin remained the constant figure in a team of eleven that has now made him a part of three generations of Indian cricket.

Talent alone is not the prerequisite for success. There are millions in this world who show an early promise at the beginning of their careers but they lose the battle with time while trying to construct a continuous curve of consistency and greatness over a considerable period. One of those few who have managed to master time is India’s little genius Sachin Tendulkar. It has been an incredible journey, one which is impossible to judge by numbers alone. He hasn't just survived these twenty years; he has left his imprint on every situation.

From being international cricket’s highest run grosser to being the first Indian sportsman to have a wax model at Madame Tussauds, Sachin Tendulkar has very few things left to achieve a human being can aspire for. Yet the sheer love of the game has made him stand tall in the sands of time. As the cricketing fraternities doff their hats to India’s most beloved son on reaching yet another momentous occasion, here is a small tribute from someone who has grown up watching his idol only through the confinement of the 21 inches of a TV screen.

It was the spring of 2004. India was playing Pakistan in Pakistan after a long time. Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, Saurav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid were all in the form of their lives and were the toast of the nation. I was sitting in a crowded hostel common room in anticipation of another India-Pakistan thriller. The excitement in the whole room was palpable as India decided to bat first. As usual Sehwag started belligerently. At the other end was Sachin Tendulkar who was criticized by many for having changed his playing style and curbing his natural instincts. Whenever Sachin defended, the whole room got annoyed. Some experts even suggested, “Iska time ho gaya... Ise nikal dena chahiye.” After playing a relatively mediocre innings, Sachin gets out. Immediately the entire population of the TV room becomes less than half. The people who were rebuking him and in fact asking him to be out had also started leaving. What an anticlimax! More so because India had a strong batting line-up to follow. That is precisely when I smiled. Because I knew, whatever they have said before was just because they love him so much that they can’t see him performing even on an average note. This is in short the story of Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar.

Every day of his life he has gone out to bat on behalf of millions of Indians. He can’t always satisfy them. Sometimes he fails because after all he is human. His fans beg to differ. For them he is God and God can’t fail. No other Indian has brought more smiles to the lives of his countrymen than Sachin Tendulkar. No other Indian is followed more closely than Sachin Tendulkar. No other Indian icon has managed to fulfil the expectations of billions over such a long period of time. This is because no other Indian is Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar. He is every mother’s ideal son, every coach’s ideal student, every wife’s ideal husband, every aspiring cricketer’s ideal role model and every nation’s ideal Brand Ambassador. No other man represents India as a whole more than Sachin Tendulkar.

As this living legend steps into his 21st year of international cricket, let us travel down memory lane to the exploits of a man who has made a billion countrymen resonate with his every movement on and off the cricket field. As I write, I realize that Sachin Tendulkar is not a person, he is a tale. He is a real life ‘folk hero’. It does not matter whether you are in Itanagar or you are in Gandhinagar... nor does it matter whether you are protecting the country’s frontiers in Kargil or you are enjoying a peaceful time in Kanyakumari... when Sachin bats every Indian has pressed the pause button on the remote control of his life wherever he has been and has been glued to the TV screen to watch an artist execute his craft. This is what Sachin has done all these years and even 20 years after he first played for his country, still amazingly continues to do so.

In order to understand what sort of an impact Sachin has had on the game of cricket, let me trisect his career: Pre-20’s, Post 20’s and Pre-30’s and finally Post 30’s. He started off as a boy wonder and till date is the only cricketer to have scored five Test centuries before turning 20. This stage is where I equate him with the mercurial Boris Becker. His post 20’s and pre 30’s was a period where for most of the time till the arrival of Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid, the fortunes of the Indian team practically hinged on Sachin Tendulkar. This is where I equate him with another one-man team — Diego Maradona. For most sportsmen who have started their career as a teenager, post 30’s means time to retire. But not if you are named Sachin Tendulkar. His batting has in fact evolved with age with a sense of romance sprinkled over every shot that he plays. This is where I equate him with the legendary Michael Schumacher who won an astonishing five World Championships after turning 30. Thus, if the overall equation is to be understood, the effect becomes mindboggling. Any sportsman will be fortunate enough to pass through any one of these three phases. Sachin Tendulkar has glorified all three phases.

Over the course of two decades, this great man has literally turned every stone thrown at him into milestones. Superlatives will take a backseat when the person they have to be attached is Sachin. Sometimes when I watch the people around him, I feel amazed at the extent of time Sachin has been around. Harsha Bhogle in one of his eulogies about Sachin wrote: “On his first tour of England he batted against Eddie Hemmings, who had made his first-class debut seven years before Tendulkar was born. He now shares a dressing room with kids who were having their umbilical cord cut when he was scoring his first century.” The present coach of the Indian team Gary Kirsten started playing in 1993, four years after Sachin and retired in 2004. It’s 2009 and Sachin is still going great guns. He still manages to pull off masterpieces even at this ripe old age, the latest in this chapter coming in one of the greatest one day innings of all time in the recent concluded one day series against the world champions Australia. India agonizingly lost the match by 3 runs, with Sachin scoring a staggering 175 of the team's total of 347. The 1990s once again resurfaced when Sachin was one-man India. It sounded a bad omen. But as a Sachin fan, I was delighted because I could once again pride on the fact that India is once again truly dependent on its most trusted son.

It requires a herculean task to end an article about Sachin Tendulkar because there are always so many things to be written. If I start writing all of those, even a book won’t suffice. But any eulogy on Sachin is incomplete without the mention of three people who have sacrificed their lives for him: his father who made Sachin disciplined enough to remain humble all throughout his life, his wife Anjali who sacrificed a flourishing career in medicine to manage his family and most importantly, his brother Ajit without whose contributions there would not have been a Sachin Tendulkar. Vinod Kambli in one of his interviews once lamented: “I wish I had an Ajit Tendulkar as my brother.”

As India celebrates Sachin’s glorious career, I wish that the great man continues to enthral us with his wizardry for a much longer time. Whoever the cricket world declares to be the greatest cricketer ever, we as Indians will always feel that Sachin Tendulkar is the greatest player to have ever played the game. Rahul Dravid had said, “On the off side first there is God, and then there is Sourav Ganguly.” I am just rephrasing that: “With a cricket bat, first there is Sachin Tendulkar, and then there is God.”

Deepanjan Deb