Tendulkar's shoes can never be filled
There are more than a billion reasons whythe Indian legend will not be forgotten
Athletes come, athletes go. But Sachin Tendulkar will live on.
Not on the cricket pitch. That part of his life, and ours, is ending. But in a billion-plus hearts and minds. In 24 years since he first wielded his bat for India, the "Little Master", a giant of five-foot-five, has been one of the finest ambassadors for the world's second most populous nation, their fortunes inextricably linked.
As India tested nuclear weapons in the 1990s, Tendulkar stamped his mark on world cricket with his bold, confident strokes. Tormenting bowlers far bigger than him, from nations far wealthier and better resourced than his own, on all kinds of grounds and in all conditions, Tendulkar seemed to embody the more assertive and ambitious country India was becoming.
Television made and kept Tendulkar accessible to Indians. So did his humble demeanour
As the Indian economy took off - expanding more than five-fold in the three decades that Tendulkar has been completing his hostile takeover of cricket's record books - he earned fabulous wealth, becoming one of the highest-paid athletes in any sport.
But television made and kept Tendulkar accessible to Indians. So did his humble demeanour. In a country of overlapping deities, competing religions and vast wealth gaps, where social tensions have frequently spilled over in blood, Indians could agree, as their T-shirts said at his 200th and last test match this week, that "Sachin is God".
He found such adulation tough to handle at times. In the teeming streets of Mumbai, where he was born and got his start in first-class cricket in 1988, his career came full circle this week with the city hosting his swansong match that became "a little difficult," as Tendulkar so delicately put it. "There's a huge following. Wherever you go, people are around."
For snippets of peace and quiet, Tendulkar went for early morning drives. As much as they envied and gnashed teeth over Tendulkar's skills - "I'll be going to bed having nightmares of Sachin," said bowling great Shane Warne in 1998 after touring India with Australia - some players acknowledged they wouldn't like to swap their lives for his.
Tendulkar was just a kid, a 16-year-old with a shock of curly hair, when he made his debut against rivals Pakistan in 1989, a tumultuous year when the Berlin Wall fell and China's communists slaughtered innocents around Tiananmen Square in Beijing.
