He is 99.5% Perfect – Viv Richards
Cricketers like Sachin Come Once in a Life Time! – Wasim Akram
Closest Thing to Batting Perfection – Sunil Gavaskar

Some people talk about history… Some become a part of it… But there are some, who CREATE history… Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar is one of them!!!

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His twenty years of endless cricket gave him plenty of records. But the hunger didn’t end here… hunger for runs, hunger to devote himself completely in this unique, yet adorable game of Cricket! Here he is, standing all tall, carrying the record of “being the first ever batsman in ODI cricket to make a double century” on his already burdened shoulders! And let me remind you, this is no ordinary innings… a 200* of just 147 deliveries against a class team like South Africa surely calls for a bow from every person present on the globe! Sachin’s knock at the Captain Roop Singh Stadium at Gwalior was decked with 25 stupendous boundaries and 3 smashing sixes…

“It feels good that I lasted for 50 overs… It is a good test of my fitness.” He said he would love to bat another 50 overs in some other inning!

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The great man dedicated this landmark to the Indian masses and marked his credit to Coach Kirsten for making the team perform well in both the formats.

With shorter boundaries, nice cosy pitches, and plenty of bashing cricketers like Peterson, Sehwag, Ponting, Afridi, Symonds and Gilly, already present in the arena, this should have happened long before! But it didn’t! Ever thought why? None of them had the required physical stamina and mental strength to score a double hundred in the shorter version of the game. But this 36 year old technician from India showed the world what all it takes to be regarded as the GOD of Cricket!

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Wonder what Sachin would be thinking at this point? He must be thinking… Now that I have completed twenty long years in Cricket, broken so many records, have the highest individual ODI score, most ODI runs, most test runs, most centuries in both forms under my belt, what else is left for me to achieve??? I am the GOD!!! With a down to earth personality like his, I can assure you that he must be sleeping a sound sleep or practising his master strokes rather than boosting what all he has achieved in his cricketing career till now. He is a kind of personality who takes life as it comes and let his bat do all the talking!

Records follow this man blindly! Holding 17,594 Runs in ODIs, 13447 Test Runs, batting average of 44.80 and 55.57 in ODIs and Tests respectively, awards like Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna, Arjuna Award, Wisden Cricketer of the Year, Padma Vibhushan and Padma Shri, Sachin has acquired the status of IMMORTAL, a position which other cricketers can only dream of reaching in future.

Sachin is the author of his own cricketing script. He knows where to hit boundaries and sixes in one paragraph, and where to decorate the next stanza with his awe-aspiring centuries! He chose to concentrate on his batting in the format of One Days and Test Cricket, opting out from the T20 format, and hence giving an altogether new dimension to his cricketing career…

Comparisons are bound to happen on the cricketing field! I still remember when Sehwag made his entry into the world class cricket, critics started comparing his batting style with Sachin Tendulkar. But the truth is that, apart from sharing the same height and aggressive batting strokes, the two batsmen stand miles apart as far as the similarity is concerned. Some people also compare our master blaster with Ricky Ponting. The comparison is genuine also, as no other cricketer is close enough to surpass the legendary records of Sachin as far as One Day Internationals are concerned. But can we really compare the two class players, who have different genres, different batting styles and different responsibilities??? Ponting, on one hand is a veteran of pull shots; whereas, Sachin’s cover drive has no comparison in this world! Both the players have individual career graphs of their own and therefore it would not be right to compare their greatness. However, Sachin has his own space, a space which the great legend Sir Bradman loved to share with his own!

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But one thing captures my attention here. Australia has grasped World Cup twice under Ponting’s captaincy but India never had that sheer luck to win World Cup despite having Sachin’s as a valued team  member! Perhaps world cup 2011 will be his last hurrah to achieve this elusive landmark for his beloved country. But that does not deprive him from being the number one batsman in the whole world. Right folks? It would not be justifiable to compare his unmatched persona with any other cricketer!

When Sachin plays, bowlers feel their impotence to bowl him out, incapability to stop him from bashing balls all over the boundary and hit sixes that disappear in crowd like birds in the sky! That’s the power of Sachin Tendulkar…

Sports apart, Sachin Tendulkar stands miles apart because of the statesmen status that he has come to acquire. He has been in public eyes for over 2 decades and rarely has he been caught or known to be involved in any controversy and that is rare for a public figure!  Known to be a loving husband and father, he comes across as a modest humble human person with raw feelings which he is not ashamed to display…

I would love to end this article with few words in mind: Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar-BRILLIANCE PERSONIFIED…