Apogee of Sachin Tendulkar

51-48: These are not the numbers that Sidhu utters when two equal teams go head to head. These are the numbers that every Indian cricket fan knows by heart and would have wanted it to change to 51-49

99 is the number that has been forever associated with Don Bradman. Yes the digits after the decimal place make it even more heartbreaking. 99.94. Before the final started Sachin was on 99 hundreds and it was widely expected that he would reach his hundredth hundred on the grandest stage of them all

When he was dismissed for 18, the nation took a collective breath of despair. Gambhir, Kohli, and Dhoni set about repairing the damage. There in lay the biggest influence that Tendulkar has exerted over a generation. As the new generation chipped away at the target the great man must have been beaming with pride

It must be to his eternal regret (or rather mine) that the country remembers only his century knocks, which means that they have a bank of 99 knocks to depend upon. My favourite innings of his in both the forms of the game are maybe little acknowledged gems and no, they are not hundreds

It was in fact Sachin Tendulkar who started the 2001 series against Australia ( yeah the epic series) with a pair of sublime innings. They were overshadowed by the partnership between Hayden and Gilchrist. He scored a small matter of 141 runs in the two innings put together of which 96 runs came in boundaries and what runs they were. In the second innings, where he scored 65 he appeared to be in supreme touch only to be bought down by a freakish catch by Ponting. The strokes that he played that still resonate in the mind. The footwork in those innings was too good to have been true as he got the frontfoot to the pitch of the delivery in synchronization with the bat. The way he was dismissed was as much a tribute to the fielder as much as it was to the value the fielders attached to the wicket. Tendulkar rocked back and looked to the ball away. Langer was struck on his back as he was directly in the path of the shot and the ball bobbed up. Ponting came running in from mid-on, dived and took the catch

The same goose bumps were afforded to me by a priceless knock played in that Independence cup final at Dhaka. After having seen Aaqib Javed  scythe through the Indian batting line-up on more occasions than one, it was a pleasure to watch Sachin destroying him and SETTING the chase up. People might consider me mad for not choosing the DESERT STORM knocks but this was the prelude to those knocks. The biggest memory from the match is Sachin coming down the track and hoisting one over the head of the bowler with the face of the bat as far as it could be from the body

At that time I was inspired enough to take up cricket as a profession but my limited abilities could not even get me to the school team but it did inspire a few people who were more talented and it was perhaps fitting that those people won the World Cup for him