A one-rupee coin on the stumps helped shape cricket's greatest run-scorer
Sachin Tendulkar's brother steered him toward cricket partly to cure his habit of picking fights at school. His coach later balanced a one-rupee coin on the stumps during net sessions: whoever got him out kept it, and if he survived, the coin was his. He won 13, and still treasures them.
Tendulkar was born in Bombay in 1973. His father, a Marathi novelist and poet, named him after the music director Sachin Dev Burman. As a small boy he was more taken with tennis, growing his hair long in imitation of John McEnroe and carrying a racket around. In 1984 his elder half-brother Ajit took him to the coach Ramakant Achrekar at Shivaji Park. The first trial went badly because the boy froze under observation, so Ajit asked Achrekar to watch again from behind a tree. Unaware he was being judged, Tendulkar played freely and was accepted.
At 14 he went to a fast-bowling academy in Madras, where the Australian quick Dennis Lillee advised him to concentrate on batting instead. Sunil Gavaskar gave him a pair of lightweight pads after he missed out on a junior award, a gesture Tendulkar called his greatest source of encouragement. In 1988 he and Vinod Kambli put on an unbroken 664 in a school match, a partnership record in any form of cricket until 2006, and weeks later he scored a century on his debut for Bombay at 15.
He was just 16 years and 205 days old when he first played Test cricket, in Karachi in November 1989, making him India's youngest ever debutant. The following year, at Old Trafford, he became the second-youngest player to make a Test hundred, standing only five feet five. In 1992 he became the first player born overseas to turn out for Yorkshire, a county that had previously picked only its own.
Over more than 24 years he scored 34,357 international runs in 664 matches, including 100 centuries, a feat no other batsman has matched. He finally won a World Cup in 2011, on his sixth attempt, and retired in November 2013 after his 200th Test. He was then named the first sportsperson to receive the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian honour.
Source: Sachin Tendulkar
