Who Is Sachin Tendulkar?

1. Bombay, 1973: the boy with the heavy bat

Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar was born on 24 April 1973 in Bombay, now Mumbai, the son of Ramesh Tendulkar, a Marathi novelist and professor, and Rajni Tendulkar, who worked in an insurance company. He was named after the Indian music director Sachin Dev Burman, and he grew up in the suburb of Bandra, playing cricket in the lanes and on the maidans of the city, where the game is a part of daily life. His elder brother Ajit recognised his talent and took him to the coach Ramakant Achrekar, one of the most respected coaches in Bombay, who trained him at Shivaji Park, the nursery of Indian cricket.

Achrekar's training was famously demanding. He would place a coin on the stumps and promise it to any bowler who dismissed Tendulkar, and to Tendulkar if he survived the session, a drill that taught the boy to value his wicket above all else. Tendulkar would practise for hours, bat in the morning and the afternoon, and travel across the city to play matches for his school, Shardashram Vidyamandir, where he once shared a partnership of 664 runs with his friend Vinod Kambli in a school match, a record that made the newspapers and announced him to the cricketing world. He was sixteen years old, small for his age, and already spoken of as the future of Indian cricket.

In 1988 he made his first-class debut for Bombay, scoring a century, and a year later, in November 1989, he was selected for India to tour Pakistan. He made his Test debut at Karachi on 15 November 1989, against a bowling attack that included Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis and Imran Khan, three of the greatest fast bowlers of the age. He was sixteen years and 205 days old, the youngest Indian to play Test cricket, and he scored fifteen runs in his first innings, a modest beginning to a career that would last for twenty-four years.

2. The nineties: carrying a nation on his shoulders

The 1990s were the decade in which Tendulkar became the centre of Indian cricket. He scored his first Test century in 1990, at Old Trafford in Manchester, at the age of seventeen, saving a match against England, and he went on to score centuries in every country he played in, against every attack, in every condition. His batting was classical and complete: a straight bat, a perfect balance, and a range of strokes that covered the whole field, from the straight drive to the paddle sweep, and his cover drive was regarded as the most beautiful shot in the game.

In 1998 he played two innings that are still remembered as the finest one-day innings ever played, in Sharjah, against Australia, in the heat of the desert, scoring 143 and then 134 in successive matches to win the tournament for India. The innings, played on his twenty-fifth birthday and the day after, were nicknamed the Desert Storm, and they showed a player at the height of his powers, dominating the best team in the world. In the same year he scored nine one-day centuries, a record, and he was named the Wisden Cricketer of the Year, the first Indian to receive the honour without playing county cricket in England.

The burden he carried was extraordinary. For much of the 1990s the Indian team was weak, and the hopes of a billion people rested on one small man with a heavy bat. When he was dismissed, the stadiums emptied, and the television sets were switched off, and the pressure was such that other players have said they could not imagine playing under it. Tendulkar bore it with a calm and a dignity that became part of his legend, and he rarely complained, preferring to let his bat speak. It was a burden that would have broken most players, and it is one of the reasons why he is loved in India as no other sportsman has been.

3. The records: 100 centuries and 34,357 runs

The numbers of Tendulkar's career are unmatched in cricket. He played 664 international matches, 200 Tests, 463 one-day internationals and one Twenty20 international, and he scored 34,357 runs in all, more than any other player in history. He is the leading run-scorer in both Test cricket, with 15,921 runs, and one-day cricket, with 18,426 runs, and he is the only player to have scored more than 30,000 international runs. He scored 100 international centuries, 51 in Tests and 49 in one-day matches, and he is the only player to have reached a hundred centuries, a record that has stood since he reached it in March 2012 and that no other player has come close to matching.

The hundredth century was the most watched innings of his career, and the most anxious. He reached ninety-nine centuries in March 2011, during the World Cup, and then went a year without scoring another, through innings after innings of global scrutiny, until finally, on 16 March 2012, he scored 114 against Bangladesh in an Asia Cup match in Mirpur. The relief in India was immense, and the innings was celebrated as the completion of a career, even though he played for another eighteen months. The century was his last in international cricket, and it was a fitting end to the record that defines him.

Other records followed him wherever he went. He was the first player to play 200 Test matches, the first to score a double century in a one-day international, reaching 200 not out against South Africa at Gwalior in February 2010, and the first to score 100 international centuries. He held the record for the most runs in World Cups, and he played in six World Cups, from 1992 to 2011, a record he shares with the Pakistani Javed Miandad. The records are so numerous that they have become a part of Indian folklore, and they are still quoted by fans who were not born when he made his debut.

4. 2011: the World Cup at last

For all his records, there was one prize that eluded Tendulkar for most of his career: the World Cup. He played in his first World Cup in 1992, as an eighteen-year-old, and he played in five more, reaching the final in 2003, when India lost to Australia, and coming closer with every tournament. By 2011, when the World Cup was held in India, he was thirty-seven years old, and it was understood to be his last chance. He scored two centuries in the tournament, including one against England and one against South Africa, and he was the leading run-scorer for India.

India reached the final, against Sri Lanka, at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai, Tendulkar's home ground. He was dismissed for eighteen, and for a moment it seemed that the dream would end in disappointment again, but his team-mates carried India home, and when the winning runs were scored the captain, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, and the team lifted Tendulkar onto their shoulders and carried him around the ground, in a lap of honour that was the most emotional moment of his career. He had waited twenty-two years for the World Cup, and he had won it at home, in front of his own people, and the image of him being carried by his team is one of the most famous in Indian sport.

The victory completed his career in the eyes of his countrymen. He had the runs, he had the centuries, and now he had the World Cup, and there was nothing left for him to prove. He played on for another two years, but the 2011 victory was the summit, and it is the match that Indian fans remember when they think of him, not the records or the centuries but the sight of a thirty-eight-year-old man, who had carried his country for two decades, being carried by his country in return.

5. The last years and the farewell at the Wankhede

After the World Cup, Tendulkar's career wound down. He retired from one-day cricket in December 2012, and in October 2013 he announced that he would retire from Test cricket after a two-match series against the West Indies, with his 200th and final Test to be played at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai, his home ground. The announcement was greeted with an outpouring of affection across India, and the farewell Test, in November 2013, was treated as a national event, with tickets selling out within minutes and the match broadcast to millions.

He scored 74 in his final innings, and when he was dismissed the crowd rose to its feet and applauded for minutes, and he walked off the field for the last time to a standing ovation. In his farewell speech, delivered on the field after the match, he thanked his family, his coaches, his team-mates and the people of India, and he spoke of the game as the love of his life. The speech, in which he said that his life's journey had been about cricket and that he would miss it, was watched by millions, and it is still quoted as one of the great farewell speeches in sport.

He was awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian honour, in 2014, becoming the first sportsperson to receive it, and he was inducted into the ICC Hall of Fame in 2019. He had already been nominated to the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian parliament, in 2012, a rare honour for a sportsman, and he served as a member until 2018. The honours were fitting, but they were not the reason he is loved. He is loved because he played the game with a purity and a joy that reminded people of why they loved cricket in the first place.

6. After retirement: mentor, voice and public figure

Since retiring, Tendulkar has remained a visible presence in cricket and in Indian public life. He has mentored young players, including through his role with the Mumbai Indians in the Indian Premier League, he has commentated on the game, and he has spoken about the importance of grassroots cricket and of keeping the game accessible to children from poor backgrounds. He has also worked on health and education initiatives, including campaigns for sanitation and for the welfare of children, and he has used his fame to support causes that matter to him, without seeking political office.

In 2026 he turned fifty-three, on 24 April, and the occasion was marked by tributes from across the cricketing world, including from the Board of Control for Cricket in India, which highlighted his records: 664 international matches, 34,357 runs and 100 centuries. In November 2026 he donated 26 of his career bats to the museum of the Mumbai Cricket Association, for an exhibition titled Batography, which opened on 16 November, a reminder that the instruments of his career are now part of the history of the game. He remains, more than a decade after his retirement, the standard by which Indian batsmen are judged, and the figure to whom young players look when they dream of playing for India.

His post-retirement life has been quieter than his playing career, and that is by choice. He has avoided controversy, he has not sought the limelight, and he has let his records speak for themselves. The contrast with other retired sportsmen, who have courted publicity, is striking, and it is part of why he is held in such affection. He was a great player who behaved like an ordinary man, and the combination is rare enough to be remembered.

7. Why Tendulkar still matters

Tendulkar matters because he is the greatest run-scorer the game has known, and because his records, 100 centuries and 34,357 runs, are unlikely ever to be broken. The nearest active player to his century record is Virat Kohli, who has scored 85 international centuries, and the gap is a measure of how far ahead Tendulkar was. But the records are not the whole of it, and they are not the reason why he is loved in India as no other sportsman has been.

He matters because he carried the hopes of a country for twenty-four years, and he did it with grace. India in the 1990s and 2000s was a country in the middle of enormous change, and Tendulkar was one of the few figures who belonged to all of India, to every region, every language and every class. When he batted, the country stopped, and when he scored, the country celebrated, and the shared experience of watching him was one of the things that held a diverse and divided country together. That is a kind of greatness that no statistic can capture.

His legacy is also in the players who followed him. A generation of Indian batsmen, from Virat Kohli to Rohit Sharma, grew up watching him, and they have said that he was the reason they took up the game. The academies, the coaching and the investment in cricket that followed his career owe something to the attention he brought to the sport, and the fact that India is now the most commercially powerful country in world cricket is, in part, a consequence of the audience he created. He was not only a great batsman; he was the man who made cricket the centre of Indian life, and the game has never been the same since.

Frequently asked questions

Sources and further reading

• ICC — Sachin Tendulkar Hall of Fame
• Wikipedia — Sachin Tendulkar
• Indian Express — Tendulkar's records at 53

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• Who Was Charlie Chaplin? — Charlie Chaplin created the Little Tramp, the most famous screen character of the silent era, and directed classics City Lights and The Great Dictator.
• Who Was Cleopatra? — Cleopatra VII was the last ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt, a multilingual stateswoman who kept her kingdom independent for 21 years before Rome annexed it.
• Who Was Diego Maradona? — Diego Maradona was an Argentine footballer who captained Argentina to the 1986 World Cup and is widely regarded as one of the greatest players in history.
• Who Was Don Bradman? — Don Bradman was an Australian cricketer who averaged 99.94 in Test cricket, a record so far ahead of any other batsman that it remains famous in sport.
• Who Was Elvis Presley? — Elvis Presley took gospel, country and rhythm and blues and turned them into rock and roll, becoming the most famous singer of his century.
• Who Was Emily Dickinson? — Emily Dickinson was an American poet who wrote nearly 1,800 poems in private in Amherst, Massachusetts, and was barely published in her lifetime.
• Who Was Faiz Ahmed Faiz? — Faiz Ahmed Faiz was Pakistan's most celebrated modern Urdu poet, whose verse joined romantic lyricism with resistance to injustice.
• Who Was Franz Beckenbauer? — Franz Beckenbauer was a German footballer known as Der Kaiser, who won the World Cup as captain in 1974 and as manager in 1990.
• Who Was Freddie Mercury? — Freddie Mercury was the lead singer of Queen, a four-octave voice and fearless showman who wrote Bohemian Rhapsody and We Are the Champions.
• Who Was Frida Kahlo? — Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter known for uncompromising, brilliantly coloured self-portraits exploring identity, the body and death.
• Who Was Galileo Galilei? — Galileo Galilei reshaped astronomy with his telescopic discoveries of 1610, defended a Sun-centred universe, and was tried by the Inquisition in 1633.
• Who Was Genghis Khan? — Genghis Khan united the Mongol tribes and built the largest contiguous land empire in history, a conqueror and lawgiver whose legacy is still argued over.
• Who Was George Washington? — George Washington won American independence, presided over the Constitutional Convention, and as first president defined the office — then walked away.
• Who Was Guglielmo Marconi? — Guglielmo Marconi was an Italian inventor who built the first practical wireless telegraph and sent the first transatlantic radio signal in 1901.
• Who Was Henry Ford? — Henry Ford was an American industrialist who founded the Ford Motor Company, built the Model T and perfected the moving assembly line.
• Who Was Isaac Newton? — Isaac Newton wrote the laws of motion and universal gravitation, invented calculus and transformed optics, leaving a lasting legacy in science.
• Who Was James Watt? — James Watt did not invent the steam engine, but his separate condenser of 1765 made it efficient enough to power the Industrial Revolution.
• Who Was Jane Austen? — Jane Austen published six novels in her lifetime, anonymously, and died at 41. This explains her life, her novels, her irony and her growing reputation.
• Who Was Jesus Christ? — Jesus of Nazareth is the central figure of Christianity, the world's largest religion. This explains his life in the Gospels, his teachings and his legacy.
• Who Was Johan Cruyff? — Johan Cruyff was the star of Total Football, won three Ballon d'Or awards, and as a manager built the Barcelona team that shaped modern football.
• Who Was Johannes Gutenberg? — Johannes Gutenberg built the first mechanised printing press in Europe and printed the Gutenberg Bible around 1455, changing how the world shared ideas.
• Who Was John Keats? — John Keats died of tuberculosis in Rome at 25, having written his six great odes in a single year. This explains his short life, his poetry and his fame.
• Who Was Joseph Stalin? — Joseph Stalin led the Soviet Union from the 1920s until 1953, industrialised the country and led it through the Second World War, ruling through terror.
• Who Was Julius Caesar? — Julius Caesar conquered Gaul, crossed the Rubicon and remade Rome's calendar and government, and was murdered by senators who feared he would be king.
• Who Was Kobe Bryant? — Kobe Bryant won five NBA championships with the Los Angeles Lakers and became known for the Mamba Mentality, on and off the court.
• Who Was Leo Tolstoy? — Leo Tolstoy wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina, then abandoned literary fame for a radical moral philosophy that influenced Gandhi and the world.
• Who Was Leonardo da Vinci? — Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper and filled notebooks with anatomy and engineering, becoming the symbol of the Renaissance.
• Who Was Ludwig van Beethoven? — Ludwig van Beethoven wrote nine symphonies, 32 piano sonatas and the Missa Solemnis, much of it while deaf. This explains his life and legacy.
• Who Was Mahatma Gandhi? — Mahatma Gandhi led India to independence through nonviolent resistance, and his ideas shaped civil-rights movements worldwide.
• Who Was Mao Zedong? — Mao Zedong founded the People's Republic of China in 1949 and led it until 1976, bringing unification and the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution.
• Who Was Margaret Thatcher? — Margaret Thatcher was the first woman to serve as British prime minister, leading the UK from 1979 to 1990 through reform, the Falklands War and division.
• Who Was Marie Curie? — Marie Curie discovered polonium and radium and remains the only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences, a pioneer of radioactivity research.
• Who Was Marilyn Monroe? — Marilyn Monroe was the biggest star of the 1950s, the blonde bombshell of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Some Like It Hot, who fought the studio system.
• Who Was Mark Twain? — Mark Twain, born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, wrote Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and became America's most famous humorist.
• Who Was Maya Angelou? — Maya Angelou was a poet, memoirist and civil rights activist whose autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings made her widely read.
• Who Was Michael Jackson? — Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, made Thriller, the best-selling album in history, and changed music video, dance and pop stardom.
• Who Was Mirza Ghalib? — Mirza Ghalib (1797-1869) is the pre-eminent Urdu and Persian poet of the last Mughal era, whose ghazals on love, loss and doubt are still recited.
• Who Was Muhammad Ali Jinnah? — Muhammad Ali Jinnah was the barrister and statesman who led the All-India Muslim League and became Pakistan's first Governor-General in 1947.
• Who Was Muhammad Ali? — Muhammad Ali was the three-time heavyweight champion who called himself The Greatest, and the most famous athlete of the twentieth century.
• Who Was Napoleon Bonaparte? — Napoleon Bonaparte rose from Corsica to Emperor of the French, redrew the map of Europe, and left a legal code that still shapes law across the world.
• Who Was Nelson Mandela? — Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison under apartheid, then became South Africa's first democratically elected president and a Nobel Peace laureate.
• Who Was Nikola Tesla? — Nikola Tesla developed the alternating-current power system, the induction motor and the Tesla coil, making long-distance electric power practical.
• Who Was Osama bin Laden? — Osama bin Laden founded al-Qaeda in 1988 and organised the September 11, 2001 attacks, in which nearly 3,000 people were killed.
• Who Was Pablo Neruda? — Pablo Neruda was Chile's great poet, a Nobel laureate, a communist senator and a diplomat. This explains his poetry, his politics and his death.
• Who Was Pablo Picasso? — Pablo Picasso co-founded Cubism, painted Guernica, and spent 75 years breaking the rules of art — the most influential artist of the twentieth century.
• Who Was Pelé? — Pele is the only footballer to win three World Cups, the youngest winner, and the game's first global icon. This is his life, his goals and his legacy.
• Who Was Pope Francis? The People's Pope — Pope Francis, the first pope from the Americas and the first Jesuit pope, led the Catholic Church from 2013 to 2025 with an emphasis on mercy and the poor.
• Who Was Prophet Muhammad? — The Prophet Muhammad is the founder of Islam, the world's second-largest religion. This explains his life, his teachings and his legacy.
• Who Was Queen Elizabeth II? — Queen Elizabeth II reigned for 70 years, from 1952 to 2022 — the longest reign in British history. This explains her life, her reign and her legacy.
• Who Was Rabindranath Tagore? — Rabindranath Tagore was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, and the author of the national anthems of India and Bangladesh.
• Who Was Rosa Parks? — Rosa Parks was not a tired seamstress who acted on impulse. She was a trained activist and NAACP secretary whose bus refusal was a deliberate act.
• Who Was Rosalind Franklin? — Rosalind Franklin's X-ray image, Photograph 51, gave Watson and Crick the key evidence for the double helix. This is her life and the credit debate.
• Who Was Rumi? — Rumi, the thirteenth-century Persian poet of Konya, wrote the Masnavi and the Divan-e Shams, and became the most widely read poet in the world.
• Who Was Shane Warne? — Shane Warne took 708 Test wickets, bowled the Ball of the Century in 1993 and won the 1999 World Cup with Australia. This explains his career.
• Who Was Stephen Hawking? — Stephen Hawking was a theoretical physicist who showed that black holes emit radiation and wrote A Brief History of Time. He died in 2018, aged 76.
• Who Was Steve Jobs? — Steve Jobs co-founded Apple in 1976, was forced out in 1985, built Pixar, and returned to launch the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad. He died in 2011, aged 56.
• Who Was Thomas Edison? — Thomas Edison held 1,093 US patents, invented the phonograph and the practical incandescent lamp, and built the first commercial electric power system.
• Who Was Vincent van Gogh? — Vincent van Gogh produced about 2,100 artworks in a single decade, including The Starry Night and Sunflowers, and became famous only after his death at 37.
• Who Was William Shakespeare? — William Shakespeare is the most performed playwright in history, yet almost nothing is reliably known about his private life.
• Who Was William Wordsworth? — William Wordsworth launched English Romanticism with Lyrical Ballads and wrote The Prelude, the great autobiographical poem. This explains his life.
• Who Was Winston Churchill? — Winston Churchill led Britain through the Second World War and won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and his record on empire is still debated.
• Who Was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart? — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a child prodigy who composed more than 600 works before his death at 35, defining the Classical era.
• Why Van Gogh Became Famous After Death — Vincent van Gogh died in 1890 almost unknown, and within a few decades his paintings were among the most loved in the world.