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Chris Gayle
CHRISTOPHER HENRY "Chris" GAYLE (born 21
September 1979) is a Jamaican cricketer who plays international cricket for
the West Indies. He captained the
West Indies' Test side from 2007 to 2010. He plays
domestic cricket for Jamaica, and
also represents theRoyal Challengers Bangalore in the Indian Premier League, the Sydney Thunder in the Big Bash League and the Dhaka Gladiators in the Bangladesh Premier League. He has also
represented Worcestershire, the Western Warriors, Barisal Burners and the Kolkata Knight Riders in his career. He was also selected
for team Uva Next for the inaugural Sri Lanka Premier League in 2012.
He is one
of only four players who have scored two triple
centuries at Test level: 317
against South Africa in 2005, and 333 against Sri Lanka in 2010. He is known as a big hitter,
often hitting sixes; in 2012 he became the first player to hit a six off the
first ball of a Test match. Playing for Royal
Challengers Bangalore, he scored a 30-ball century, the fastest across any
format, that became the highest individual T20 score (175). It eclipsed the previous mark set by Brendan McCullum of Kolkata
Knight Riders. At the launch of the Caribbean Premier League he was announced as the first
franchise player for the league.
Gayle started his cricket
career with the famous Lucas Cricket Club in Kingston, Jamaica. Gayle
claimed "If it was not for Lucas I don't know where I would be today.
Maybe on the streets." Lucas
Cricket Club's nursery has been named in honour of Gayle.
Gayle played for the West
Indies at youth international level prior to making his first-class debut aged 19 for Jamaica. He played his first One Day International eleven months later, and his first Test match six months after that. Gayle, who normally opens the
innings when he plays for the West Indies, is a destructive batsman who is most
effective playing square of the wicket. In July 2001, Gayle (175), together
with Daren Ganga (89) established the record for opening partnerships at Queens Sports Club, Bulawayo when they put on 214 together against Zimbabwe.
Adam Gilchrist
ADAM CRAIG GILCHRIST, (born
14 November 1971), nicknamed "Gilly" or "Churchy" is a
former Australian cricketer who has captained Kings XI
Punjab and Middlesex. He is an attacking
left-handed batsman and record-breaking wicket-keeper, who
redefined the role for the Australian national team through his aggressive
batting. He is considered to be one of the greatest wicket-keeper–batsmen in
the history of the game. He
holds the world record for the most dismissals by a wicket keeper in One
Day International(ODI) cricket and the most by an Australian in Test
cricket. His strike
rate is amongst the highest in the history of both ODI and Test cricket;
his century against England at Perth in December 2006 is the
second-fastest century in all Test cricket. He
is the only player to have hit 100 sixes in Test cricket. His
17 Test and 16 ODI centuries are the most by a wicket-keeper. He
holds the unique record of scoring at least 50 runs in successive World Cup
finals (in 1999, 2003 and 2007) and is one of only three
players to have won three titles.
Gilchrist is renowned for walking when he considers
himself to be out, sometimes contrary to the decision of the umpire. He
made his first-class debut in 1992, his first One-Day International
appearance in 1996 in India and his Test debut in 1999. During
his career, he played for Australia in 96 Test matches and over 270 One-day
internationals. He was Australia's vice-captain in both forms of the
game, captaining the team when regular captains Steve Waugh and Ricky
Ponting were unavailable. He retired from
international cricket in March 2008.
In March 2013, he announced that he would join the Caribbean
Premier League, a Twenty20 tournament in the West Indies in
July along with teammate Ricky Ponting.
Adam Gilchrist was born in 1971
at Bellingen Hospital, in Bellingen, New South Wales, the youngest of four
children. He and his family lived in Dorrigo, Junee and then Deniliquin where, playing for his school,
Deniliquin South Public School, he won the Brian Taber Shield (named after New South Wales cricketer Brian Taber). At the age of 13, his
parents, Stan and June, moved the family to Lismore where Gilchrist captained the Kadina High School cricket team. Gilchrist was selected for the state
under-17 team, and in 1989 he was offered a
scholarship by London-based
Richmond Cricket Club, a scheme he now supports himself. During his year at Richmond, he also
played junior cricket for Old
Actonians Cricket Club's under 17
team, with whom he won the Middlesex League and Cup double. He moved to Sydney
and joined the Gordon Club in Sydney
Grade Cricket, later moving to Northern Districts.
Gilchrist
is married to his high school sweetheart Melinda (Mel) Gilchrist (née Sharpe),
a dietitian, and they have three
sons, Harrison, Archie and Ted, and a daughter, Annie Jean. His family came under the spotlight in
the months leading up to the 2007
Cricket World Cup as Archie's
impending birth threatened his presence in the squad; Archie was born in
February and Gilchrist was able to take part in the tournament.
Gilchrist's attacking batting has
been a key part of Australia's one-day success, as he usually opens the batting.
He was a part of the successful1999, 2003 and 2007
Cricket World Cup campaigns. Gilchrist's Test batting average in
the upper 40s is unusually high for a wicket-keeper. He is currently 45th on the all–time
list of highest batting averages. He
maintains a Test strike-rate of 82 runs per hundred balls, the highest since
balls were recorded in full. His combination of attack and consistency create
one of the most dynamic world cricketers ever,playing shots to all areas of
the field with uncommon timing. Gilchrist's skills as a wicket-keeper are
sometimes questioned; some people would claim that he is the best keeper in
Australia while Victorian wicket-keeper Darren Berry was regarded by many as the best
Australian wicket-keeper of the 1990s and early 2000s.
In this
role, Gilchrist is perhaps disadvantaged by his relatively tall stature for a
pure wicket-keeper. However, while perhaps not as elegant as some, he has
successfully kept wicket for spin
bowler Shane Warne and fast
bowlers Glenn McGrath and Brett
Lee for most of his international
career. His partnerships with McGrath and Lee are second and fourth
respectively in both test and ODI history for the number of wickets taken. With Alec
Stewart and Mark Boucher, he shares the record for
most catches (6) by a wicketkeeper in a ODI match, however he has now achieved
this feat five times, the most recent versus India in 2008 CB Series. The match in 2007 was also the second
time he took six dismissals and scored a half century in the same
ODI; he remains the only player to do so even once. At Old
Trafford in August 2005, he
passed Alec Stewart's world record of 4,540 runs as a Test wicketkeeper. Statistically,
he is currently the most successful ODI wicket-keeper in history; with 417
catches and 55 stumpings, a total of 472 dismissals, his closest rival, Mark
Boucher, is more than 80 dismissals behind.
Kapil Dev
KAPIL DEV RAMLAL NIKHANJ (born 6
January 1959), better known as Kapil
Dev, is a former Indian cricketer.
He captained the Indian cricket team which won the 1983 Cricket World Cup. Named by Wisden as the Indian Cricketer of the Century in 2002, Kapil Dev was one of the greatest all-rounders of all time. He was also India's
national cricket coach for 10 months between October 1999 and August 2000.
Kapil was
a right-arm pace bowler noted for his graceful action and
potent outswinger, and was
India's main strike bowler for most of his career. He also developed a fine inswinging yorker during the 1980s, which he used very
effectively against tail-enders.
As a batsman, he was a natural
striker of the ball who could hook and drive effectively. A naturally
aggressive player, he often helped India in difficult situations by taking the
attack to the opposition. Nicknamed The
Haryana Hurricane, he represented the Haryana
cricket team in domestic cricket. He retired in 1994, holding the world
record for the most number of wickets taken in Test cricket, a record subsequently
broken by Courtney Walsh in 2000. At the time, he was also
India's highest wicket taker in both major forms of cricket, Tests and ODIs. He is the only player in the
history of cricket to have taken more than 400 wickets (434 wickets) and scored
more than 5,000 runs in Tests, making him one of the greatest all-rounders to have played the game. On 8 March
2010, Kapil Dev was inducted into the ICC
Cricket Hall of Fame
Kapil Dev was born as Kapil
Dev Ramlal Nikhanj to Ram Lal Nikhanj, a building and timber contractor and his
wife Raj Kumari in Chandigarh on 6 January
1959. His
parents had migrated from Rawalpindi during the Partition of India. Kapil Dev was a student at D.A.V. School and
joined Desh Prem Azad in 1971.
By the end of 1983, Kapil
already had about 250 Test wickets in just five years and looked well on his
way to becoming one of the most prolific wicket-takers ever. However, his
bowling declined following knee surgery in 1984, as he lost some of his
majestic jump at the crease. Despite this setback, he never missed playing a
single test or one-day game on fitness grounds (save for his disciplinary
ouster in the 3rd test at Calcutta during the 1984/85 series against England).
He continued to be effective, if not devastating, for another ten years and
became the second bowler ever to take 400 wickets in Test
cricket in 1991–92 when he took Mark
Taylor's wicket in a series versus Australia in
Australia. In that Australian tour he took 25 wickets.
Kapil continued as India's lead
pace bowler under a succession of captains in the early 1990s. He was involved
in a notable incident during the Lord's Test Match of 1990, when he hit
off-spinner Eddie Hemmings for four sixes in succession to take
India past the follow-on target. This match also featured the highest
test score by an Englishman against India, 333 by Graham Gooch. He was also cited
by umpire Dickie Bird as being one of the greatest
all-rounders of all-time.
He also
became a valuable batsman in the ODI version of the game, being used as a
pinch-hitter to accelerate the run-scoring rate, usually in the final ten
overs, and relied upon to stabilise the innings in the event of a collapse. He
played in the 1992 Cricket World
Cup, which was his last, under the captaincy of Mohammad Azharuddin. He led the
bowling attack with younger talents like Javagal
Srinath and Manoj Prabhakar, who would eventually
succeed him as India's leading pace bowlers. He retired in 1994, after breaking Richard Hadlee's then standing record
for the most Test wickets taken.
Brian Lara
BRIAN CHARLES LARA, (born
2 May 1969) is a former West
Indian international cricket player. He is widely acknowledged as one of
the greatest batsmen of his era and one of the finest ever to have
graced the game. He topped the Test batting rankings on several occasions and holds several
cricketing records, including the record for the highest individual score in first-class cricket, with 501 not out
forWarwickshire against Durham at Edgbaston in 1994, which is the only quintuple
hundred in first-class cricket history.
Lara also
holds the record for the highest individual score in a test innings after
scoring 400 not out against England at Antigua in 2004. He is the only batsman to have ever
scored a hundred, a double century, a triple century, a quadruple century and a
quintuple century in first class games over the course of a senior career. Lara also holds the test record of
scoring the highest number of runs in a single over in a Test match, when he
scored 28 runs off an over by Robin
Peterson of South Africa in 2003.
Lara's
match-winning performance of 153 not out against Australia in Bridgetown, Barbados in 1999 has been rated by Wisden as the second best batting performance
in the history of Test cricket, next only to the 270 runs scored by Sir Donald Bradman in The
Ashes Test match of 1937. Muttiah Muralitharan, rated as the
greatest Test match bowler ever by Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, and the highest wicket-taker in both Test cricket and in One Day Internationals (ODIs),has hailed Lara as his toughest
opponent among all batsmen in the world.Lara was awarded the Wisden Leading Cricketer in the World awards in 1994 and 1995 and is also one of only three
cricketers to receive the prestigious BBC
Overseas Sports Personality of the Year, the other two being Sir Garfield Sobers and Shane
Warne.
Brian
Lara was appointed honorary member of the Order
of Australia on 27 November 2009. On 14 September 2012 he was inducted
to theICC's Hall of Fame at the
awards ceremony held in Colombo, Sri Lanka as a 2012-13 inductee along with
Australian Glenn McGrath and former England women all-rounder Enid Bakewell.
Brian
Lara is popularly nicknamed as "The Prince of Port of Spain" or
simply "The Prince". He
has the dubious distinction of playing in second highest number of test matches
(63) in which his team was on losing side, just behind Shivnarine Chanderpaul (68).
Lara was the 10th of 11 children.
Lara's father Bunty and one of his older sisters Agnes Cyrus enrolled him in
the local Harvard Coaching Clinic at the age of six for weekly coaching
sessions on Sundays. As a result, Lara had a very early education in correct
batting technique. Lara's first school was St. Joseph's Roman Catholic primary.
He then went to San Juan secondary, which is located in Moreau Road, Lower
Santa Cruz. A year later, at fourteen years old, he moved on to Fatima College where he started his development as a
promising young player under cricket coach Mr. Harry Ramdass. Aged 14, he
amassed 745 runs in the schoolboys' league, with an average of 126.16 per
innings, which earned him selection for the Trinidad national under-16 team. When
he was 15 years old, he played in his first West Indian under-19 youth
tournament and that same year, Lara represented West Indies in Under-19
cricket.
Lara
moved in with his future fellow Trinidadian cricketer Michael Carew in Woodbrook, Port of Spain (a 20 minute drive from Santa Cruz).
Michael's father Joey Carew worked with him on his cricketing and
personal career development. Michael got Lara his first job at Angostura Ltd.in the marketing
department. Lara played in Trinidad and Tobago junior soccer and table
tennis sides but Lara believed
that cricket was his path to success, saying that he wanted to emulate his
idols Gordon Greenidge, Viv Richards and Roy
Fredericks.
Lara has dated former Durham
County Cricket Club receptionist and British lingerie model Lynnsey Ward. During the West Indies tour to
Australia in late 2000, Lara was accompanied by Ward.
Lara is
the father of two girls one called Sydney (born 1996) whom he fathered with
Trinidadian journalist and model Leasel Rovedas. Sydney was named as a tribute
to one of Lara's favourite grounds, the Sydney
Cricket Ground, where Lara scored his first Test century- the highly acclaimed
277 in the 1992–93 season. His second daughter Tyla was also with Leasel
Rovedas she was born in 2010.
His
father died in 1989 of a heart attack and his mother died in 2002 of cancer.
In 2009,
Lara was made an honorary Member of the Order
of Australia (AM) for services to
West Indian and Australian cricket.
MS Dhoni
MAHENDRA SINGH DHONI (commonly known as M. S. Dhoni) (born 7 July 1981)
is an Indian cricketer and the currentcaptain of the Indian national cricket team. He is an
attacking right-handed middle-order batsman and wicket-keeper. He is widely regarded
as one of the greatest finishers in limited-overs cricket.He made his One Day International (ODI) debut in December 2004 againstBangladesh,
and played his first Test a year later against Sri Lanka.
Dhoni is
the captain of India in all three
forms of the game. His Test and
ODI records are the best among all Indian captains to date. He took over the
ODI captaincy from Rahul Dravid in 2007 and led the team to its first
ever bilateral ODI series wins in Sri Lanka and New Zealand. Under his
captaincy, India won the 2007 ICC
World Twenty20, the CB Series of 2007–08, the 2010 Asia Cup, the 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup and the2013 ICC Champions Trophy. In
the final of the 2011 World Cup, Dhoni scored 91 not out off 79 balls to take
India to victory for which he was awarded the Man of the Match. After taking up
the Test captaincy in 2008, he led the team to series wins in New Zealand and West
Indies, and the Border-Gavaskar
Trophy in 2008, 2010 and 2013. In
2009, Dhoni also led the Indian team to number one position for the first time
in the ICC Test rankings. In
2013, under his captaincy, India became the first team in more than 40 years to whitewash Australia in a Test series. In June
2013, when India defeated England in the final of the Champions Trophy in
England, Dhoni became the first captain to win all the three ICC trophies. He
has also captained the Chennai
Super Kings to victory in the 2010 and 2011 seasons
of Indian Premier League along with the 2010 Champions League Twenty20.
Dhoni
holds the post of Vice-President of India
Cements Ltd. after resigning from Air India. India Cements is the owner
of the IPL team Chennai Super Kings, and Dhoni has been its captain since the
first edition of IPL.
Dhoni has
been the recipient of many awards including the ICC ODI Player of the Year award in 2008 and 2009 (the first
player to win the award twice), the Rajiv
Gandhi Khel Ratna award in 2007
and the Padma Shri, India's
fourth highest civilian honour, in 2009. He was named as the captain of ICC
World Test XI and ICC World ODI XI teams for 2009. The Indian Territorial Army conferred the honorary rank of Lieutenant Colonel to Dhoni on 1 November 2011. He is the
second Indian cricketer after Kapil
Dev to have received this honour.
In June 2013, Forbes ranked Dhoni at 16th in the list of highest paid athletes in the
world, estimating his earnings at $31.5 million.The TIME
magazine has added Dhoni in its
"Time 100" list of 100 most influential people of 2011. SportsPro has rated Dhoni as the sixteenth most
marketable athlete in the world.[
Dhoni was born in Ranchi, Bihar (now in Jharkhand),and he identifies as being a Rajput.His paternal village Lvali is in the
Lamgarha block of the Almora
District of Uttarakhand. Dhoni's parents, moved
from Uttarakhand to Ranchi where Pan Singh worked in
junior management positions in MECON.
Dhoni has a sister Jayanti Gupta and a brother Narendra Singh Dhoni. Dhoni is a fan of Adam Gilchrist, and his childhood
idols were cricket teammate Sachin
Tendulkar, Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan and singer Lata Mangeshkar.
Dhoni
studied at DAV Jawahar Vidya
Mandir, Shyamali, Ranchi, Jharkhand where he initially excelled in badminton
and football and was selected at district and club
level in these sports. Dhoni was a goalkeeper for his football team and was sent to
play cricket for a local cricket club by his football coach. Though he had not
played cricket, Dhoni impressed with his wicket-keeping skills and became the
regular wicketkeeper at the Commando cricket club (1995–1998). Based on his
performance at club cricket, he was picked for the 1997/98 season Vinoo Mankad
Trophy Under-16 Championship and he performed well.Dhoni focused on cricket after his
10th standard. Dhoni was a Train Ticket Examiner
(TTE) at Kharagpur railway
station from 2001 to 2003, under
South Eastern Railway in Midnapore (W), a district in West Bengal. His colleagues remember
him as a very honest, straightforward employee of the Indian Railways. But he
also had a mischievous side to his personality. Once, while staying at the
railway quarters, Dhoni and a couple of his friends covered themselves in white
bedsheets and walked around in the complex late in the night. The night guards
were fooled into believing that there were ghosts moving around in the complex.
The story made big news on the next day.
Dhoni married Sakshi Singh Rawat,
a native of Dehradun, Uttarakhand,
on 4 July 2010. At the time of their marriage, she was studying Hotel
Management and was working as a trainee at the Taj Bengal, Kolkata. After the
retirement of Sakshi’s father from tea gardens, their family shifted to their
native place, Dehradun.
The
wedding stumped the media and the fans as it took place only a day after the
couple got engaged. Bollywood actress Bipasha Basu, a close friend of Dhoni,
was quick to inform the media that the wedding was planned for months and was
not a spur of the moment decision.
Dhoni was named the captain of
Indian squad for the inaugural ICC
World Twenty20 held in South
Africa in September 2007. India were crowned champions as Dhoni
led the team to victory against Pakistan in a thrilling contest. He, then, went on to become the ODI
captain of the Indian team for the seven-match ODI series against Australia in September 2007. He made his debut as full-time Test
captain of India during the fourth and final Test against Australia at Nagpur
in November 2008 replacing Anil
Kumble who was injured in the
third test and who then announced his retirement. Dhoni was vice-captain in
this series up to that point. India eventually won that Test thus
clinching the series 2–0 and retained the Border-Gavaskar
Trophy. Dhoni had previously captained India
on a stand-in basis against South
Africa and Australia in 2008 and
2009 respectively.
It was
under his captaincy that India climbed to No. 1 in the ICC Test Rankings in
December 2009. After that he managed to lead India in a series-leveling world
championship of Tests against the South Africans in February 2010. India also
managed to draw the Test series 1-1 in South Africa later that year.
After
winning the 2011 ICC Cricket
World Cup final against Sri Lanka
on 2 April 2011 with his match winning knock of unbeaten 91, Tendulkar heaped
praises on Dhoni, claiming him to be the best captain he has played under.
Tendulkar mentioned that it was Dhoni's calm influence that was rubbing off on
all his team-mates and described Dhoni's handling of pressure was incredible.
Only nine
players have captained ten or more Tests playing as a wicket-keeper. Dhoni
leads the table with 33 Tests as captain, 15 ahead of Gerry Alexander in second place.
In March
2013, Dhoni became the most successful Indian Test captain when he eclipsed Sourav Ganguly’s record of 21
victories from 49 Tests. Ganguly
also said in an interview to a news channel that Dhoni is the all-time greatest
captain of India and he has a great record to support this credential.
Sachin Tendulkar
SACHIN RAMESH TENDULKAR (born 24
April 1973) is a former Indian cricketer widely acknowledged as the greatest
batsman of the modern generation, popularly holds the title "God of
Cricket" among his fan. He is also acknowledged as the
greatest cricketer of all time. He took up cricket at the age of
eleven, made his Test debut against Pakistan at the age of sixteen, and went on to
represent Mumbai domestically and India internationally for close to
twenty-four years. He is the only player to have scored one hundred international
centuries, the first batsman to score a Double
Century in a One Day International, and the only
player to complete more than 30,000 runs in international cricket. In October 2013, he became the 16th
player and first Indian to aggregate 50,000 runs in all recognised cricket (First-class, List A and Twenty20 combined).
In 2002, Wisden Cricketers' Almanack ranked him the second greatest Test
batsman of all time, behind Don
Bradman, and the second greatest ODI batsman of all time, behind Viv Richards. Later in his career, Tendulkar was a
part of the Indian team that won the 2011
World Cup, his first win in six World
Cup appearances for India.He had previously been named
"Player of the Tournament" at the 2003
edition of the tournament, held in South Africa. In 2013, he was the only
Indian cricketer included in an all-time Test World XI named to mark the 150th
anniversary of Wisden
Cricketers' Almanack.
Tendulkar
received the Arjuna Award in 1994 for outstanding sporting
achievement, the Rajiv Gandhi
Khel Ratna award in 1997, India's
highest sporting honour, and the Padma
Shri and Padma Vibhushan awards in 1999 and 2008, respectively,
India's fourth and second highest civilian awards. After a few hours of his
final match on 16 November 2013, the Prime
Minister's Office announced the
decision to award Bharat Ratna,
India's highest civilian award. With
the scientist C. N. R. Rao, he
was conferred the award on 4 February 2014 by President Pranab Mukherjee in a special ceremony in the Durbar
Hall of the Rashtrapati Bhavan.
He is the youngest recipient to date and the first ever sportsperson to receive
the award. He also won the 2010 Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy for cricketer of the year at the ICC
awards. In 2012, Tendulkar was nominated to Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Parliament of India. He was also the first sportsperson
(and the first without an aviation background) to be awarded the honorary rank
of Group Captain by the Indian Air Force. In 2012, he was named an Honorary Member of the Order of Australia.
In
December 2012, Tendulkar announced his retirement from ODIs. He retired from Twenty20 cricket in
October 2013 and subsequently announced his
retirement from all forms of cricket, retiring
on 16 November 2013 after playing his 200th
and final Test match, against theWest Indies in
Mumbai's Wankhede Stadium. Tendulkar played 664 international
cricket matches in total, scoring 34,357 runs.
Tendulkar was born at Nirmal Nursing Home on 24 April 1973. His father, Ramesh Tendulkar,
was a well-known Marathi novelist and his mother, Rajni, worked in
the insurance industry. Ramesh named Tendulkar after his favourite music
director, Sachin Dev Burman. Tendulkar has three elder siblings: two
half-brothers Nitin and Ajit, and a half-sister Savita. They were Ramesh's
children from his first marriage.He spent his
formative years in the Sahitya Sahawas Cooperative Housing Society, Bandra (East). As a young boy, Tendulkar was considered a bully, and often
picked up fights with new children in his school. He also showed an interest in tennis, idolising John McEnroe. To help curb his mischievous and bullying
tendencies, Ajit introduced him to cricket in 1984. He introduced the young
Sachin to Ramakant Achrekar, a famous cricket coach and a club cricketer of
repute, at Shivaji Park, Dadar. In the first meeting,
the young Sachin did not play his best. Ajit told Achrekar that he was feeling
self-conscious due to the coach observing him, and wasn't displaying his
natural game. Ajit requested the coach to give him another chance at playing,
but watch while hiding behind a tree. This time, Sachin, apparently unobserved,
played much better and was accepted at Achrekar's academy. Ajit is ten years
elder and is credited by Sachin for playing a pivotal role in his life.
Achrekar was impressed with Tendulkar's talent and advised him to
shift his schooling to Sharadashram Vidyamandir (English) High School, a school at Dadar which had a dominant cricket team and had
produced many notable cricketers. Prior to this,
Tendulkar had attended the Indian Education Society's New English School in
Bandra (East). He was also coached under the guidance of
Achrekar at Shivaji Park in the mornings and evenings. Tendulkar would practice for hours on end in the nets. If he
became exhausted, Achrekar would put a one-rupee coin on the top of
the stumps, and the bowler who dismissed Tendulkar would
get the coin. If Tendulkar passed the whole session without getting dismissed,
the coach would give him the coin. Tendulkar now considers the 13 coins he won
then as some of his most prized possessions. He moved in with
his aunt and uncle, who lived near Shivaji Park, during this period, due to his
hectic schedule.
Meanwhile at school, he developed a reputation as a child prodigy.
He had become a common conversation point in local cricketing circles, where
there were suggestions already that he would become one of the greats. Sachin
consistently featured in his school Shardashram Vidyamandir (English) team in
Matunga Gujarati Seva Mandal (popularly coined MGSM) Shield. Besides school cricket, he also played club cricket,
initially representing John Bright Cricket Club in Mumbai's premier club
cricket tournament, the Kanga League, and later went on
to play for the Cricket Club of India.In 1987, at the age of 14, he attended the MRF Pace Foundation in Madras (now Chennai) to train as a fast bowler,
but Australian fast bowler Dennis Lillee,
who took a world record 355 Test wickets, was unimpressed, suggesting that
Tendulkar focus on his batting instead. On 20 January
1987, he also turned out as substitute for Imran Khan's side in an exhibition
game at Brabourne Stadium in Mumbai, to mark the golden jubilee of Cricket Club of India. A couple of months
later, former Indian batsman Sunil Gavaskar gave
him a pair of his own ultra light pads and consoled him to not get disheartened
for not getting the Mumbai Cricket Association's "Best junior cricket
award"(He was 14 years that time). "It was the greatest source of
encouragement for me," Tendulkar said nearly 20 years later after
surpassing Gavaskar's world record of 34 Test centuries. Sachin served as a Ballboy in 1987 Cricket World Cup when India played against England in the
semifinal in Mumbai. His
season in 1988 was extraordinary, with Tendulkar scoring a century in every
innings he played. He was involved in an unbroken 664-run partnership in a Lord Harris Shield inter-school game against St.
Xavier's High School in 1988 with his friend and team-mate Vinod Kambli, who would also go on to represent India. The destructive pair
reduced one bowler to tears and made the rest of the opposition unwilling to
continue the game. Tendulkar scored 326 (not out) in this innings and scored
over a thousand runs in the tournament. This was a record
partnership in any form of cricket until 2006, when it was broken by two
under-13 batsmen in a match held at Hyderabad in India.
On 24 May 1995, at the age of 22, Tendulkar married Anjali, a paediatrician and daughter of Gujarati industrialist Anand Mehta and British social worker Annabel
Mehta. Sachin's father-in-law, Anand Mehta, is a seven-time national bridge
champion. Anjali
is six years his senior. His
wife Anjali said in an interview that she first met him at the Mumbai airport
when he returned from his first tour of England in 1990, after scoring his
maiden Test ton and when she was there to pick up her mother and Sachin was
arriving with the Indian team. They had a courtship of five years and had got
engaged in 1994 in New Zealand. They have two children, Sara (born 12 October
1997) and Arjun (born 24 September 1999). Arjun, a left handed batsman, has
recently been included in under-14 probables list of Mumbai Cricket Association
for off-season training camp. In January 2013 he was selected in Mumbai
under-14 team for the west zone league.
Sachin Tendulkar is the most
prolific run scorer in one-day internationals with 18,426 runs. With a current aggregate of 15,470
Test runs, he surpassedBrian Lara's previous record tally of 11,953 runs as the
highest run scorer in test matches in the second Test of Australia's 2008 tour of India inMohali. Tendulkar described "It is
definitely the biggest achievement in 19 years of my career" on the day he
achieved the record. He also holds the record of highest
number of centuries in both Test (51) and ODI (49) cricket. (49). On 16 March
2012, Tendulkar scored his 100th international hundred.It came against Bangladesh in the league matches of Asia Cup 2012. Throughout his career,
he has made a strong impact on Indian cricket and was, at one time, the
foundation of most of the team's victories. In recognition with his impact on
sport in a cricket-loving country like India, Tendulkar has been granted the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna, Arjuna Award, Padma Shri and Padma
Vibhushan by the Government of India.He was also chosen as one of the five Wisden Cricketers of the Year in 1997 and is ranked by the Wisden 100 as the second best test batsman and
ODI batsman of all time.
Tendulkar
has also consistently done well in Cricket
World Cups. Tendulkar was the highest run scorer of the 1996 Cricket World Cup and 2003
Cricket World Cup.After his century against England
during group stages of 2011
Cricket World Cup, he became the player to hit most number of centuries in Cricket World Cups with six centuries and the first
player to score 2000 runs in World Cup cricket.Tendulkar has scored over 1000 runs in
a calendar year in ODIs 7 times, and in 1998 he scored 1894 runs, easily the
record for the highest number of runs scored by any player in a single calendar
year for one day internationals. On
24 February 2010, Tendulkar broke the previous world record for highest
individual innings in an ODI, and became the first male cricketer to score a
double-century in one-day cricket. He made 200 runs and broke the previous
record of 194 runs, jointly held by Pakistan opener Saeed Anwar and Zimbabwe's Charles Coventry.
He has
been Man of the Match 13 times in Test matches and Man of the Series four times,out of them twice in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy against Australia. The performances earned him
respect from Australian cricket fans and players.Similarly he has been Man of the Match 62 times in One day International
matches and Man of the Series 14 times. He is the leading run-scorer and century maker in Test and one-day international cricket. He is the first player to score a
double century in Men's ODI cricket. He also holds the world record for
playing highest number of Test and ODI matches.Tendulkar is the only cricketer
to accomplish the feat of scoring a hundred centuries in international cricket
which includes 49 ODI and 51 Test centuries. He is also the only player to score
fifty centuries in Test cricket,and the first to score fifty centuries
in all international cricket combined. On 17 October 2008, when he surpassed Brian Lara's record for the most runs
scored in Test cricket, he also became the first batsman to score 12,000,
13,000, 14,000 and 15,000 runs in that form of the game,having also been the third batsman and
first Indian to pass 11,000 runs in Test cricket.He was also the first player to score
10,000 runs in one-day internationals, and also the first player to cross every
subsequent 1000-run mark that has been crossed in ODI cricket history. In the fourth Test of the
Border-Gavaskar Trophy against Australia, Tendulkar surpassed Australia's Allan Border to become the player to cross the
50-run mark the most number of times in Test cricket history, and also the
second ever player to score 11 Test centuries against Australia, tying with Sir Jack Hobbs of England more than 70 years
previously. On 8 November 2011, Tendulkar became
the first batsman to score 15,000 runs in Test Cricket.