Australia's first impression, in 1991, of Sachin Tendulkar was of a
beautiful young batsman who made 148 not out at the SCG, in Shane
Warne's first Test. Two matches later, on a lightning pitch in Perth,
against a snarling Australian pace attack, the boy who looked even
younger than his 19 years, who had been brought up on slow, spinning
Indian wickets, showed an astonishing mix of serenity and power to make
114.
That night in the dressing room, Merv Hughes predicted Tendulkar would break Allan Border's Test runs record.
"This little prick's going to get more runs than you, AB," Hughes said
as he cracked open a beer. He could not have predicted by how much, or
how many records he would break, or how great Tendulkar would become.
A batting genius who has played the game for almost a quarter of a
century, he combined brilliance with incredible longevity. He outlasted
fellow greats such as West Indies champion Brian Lara, Australian legend
Ricky Ponting and Indian teammate Rahul Dravid, and inspired a new
generation of players who wanted to be like him.
The others were all champions, and South Africa's relentless allrounder
Jacques Kallis is still going, but none of his contemporaries commanded
Tendulkar's god-like status, which coincided with India's rise as a
cricket superpower.
If Don Bradman is the greatest batsman the game has seen, where does
Tendulkar rank among the modern greats? His Australian opponents felt
Lara could, on his day, be more damaging, but that Tendulkar was a more
constant threat.
The Indian's record against Australia - 3630 runs at 55 - and in
Australia - 1809 at 53.21 - is a testament to that. His affinity with
the SCG lasted his whole career; he averages 157 there, and Englishman
Walter Hammond is the only touring batsman to have made more runs at the
ground.
Tendulkar's super-stardom did not dull his runmaking. He churned out a
phenomenal 51 Test centuries. A master of spin, he played Warne better
than anyone. It takes a genius to know one and the pair became great
friends. The incomparable Australian leg spinner is one of the few
people on the planet who knows what it's like to be him, who could
comprehend the fame that made Tendulkar wait until the middle of the
night to drive his luxury car through the streets of Mumbai. He carried
himself with remarkable grace, on and off the field. To hear the noise
of an Indian crowd when he is at the crease, then the silence when he
gets out, no matter the importance of the game, is one of sport's
greatest thrills.
Former Australian captain Greg Chappell admitted after coaching India
that he had not fully understood the pressure Tendulkar lived with, his
influence or his exalted place Indian life.
"Once in South Africa I called in Sachin and Sehwag to ask
more of them, I could tell by the look on their faces that they were
affronted. Later Dravid, who was in the room, said 'Greg, they've never
been spoken to like that before','' Chappell wrote in his autobiography,
Fierce Focus. He explained that a glimpse of Tendulkar was a life-changing event for Indians.
"We were playing an unrelenting amount of cricket to satisfy
the demand, at least 50 % more than Australia were playing and the
pressure was beyond belief. Nobody was carrying that pressure more than
Sachin. Not even Don Bradman carried expectations like this, and Sachin
had been bearing it since 1989."
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