Why is Sachin Tendulkar the ‘God of Cricket’? | Eisha Acton
3 min readFeb 28, 2021
Cricket fans will recognise Sachin Tendulkar’s outstanding sporting achievements make him a true cricket legend- THE GOD OF CRICKET. So, in today’s story I’m going to talk about five defining moments of his career…
- Sachin Tendulkar became the youngest player to debut for India in Tests at the age of 16 years and also the youngest player to debut for India in ODIs. He made his India debut against Pakistan in Karachi in 1989. He scored 15 runs in his debut Test, which eventually ended in a draw. In the subsequent match in Faisalabad, young Sachin scored his first international half-century. Fun fact: in the same match, Pakistan fast bowler Waqar Younis had also made his Test debut. A year later Sachin made history- in a Test match against England he became the youngest Indian to score a century in Test cricket, this happened in Manchester on August 9, 1990 when Sachin was just 17years old! He then went on to represent India for 24 years.
- Sachin Tendulkar became Yorkshire’s first overseas signing. In 1992, at just 19years old, Tendulkar signed for Yorkshire. My favourite photo of young Sachin is the one taken on his debut for Yorkshire’s first Championship match at the Oval. He’s clutching a pint of Tetley’s Beer (who were the sponsors at the time) this iconic photo went on to be worth around half a billion rupees in later years. With that flat cap and pint young Sachin looked quite the quintessential Yorkie, who ironically, was teetotal at the time haha.
- 12years ago, in Nov 2009, the Master Blaster became the highest run scorer of all time in International cricket. It was on Day 5 of the first of three Test matches between India and Sri Lanka in Ahmedabad and Sachin completed his 30,000th international run. This milestone was his 43rd century in Test cricket. The consistency required to reach that mark at the highest level makes this record unlikely to be beaten any time soon!
- In 1999 Sachin achieved the Second Highest ODI batting Partnership. It happened in a match against New Zealand, with none other than the dynamic duo- Sachin Tendulkar and former Indian skipper Rahul Dravid. They made the record of highest ODI partnership of 331 runs. In 2015 this record was broken by Chris Gayle and Marlon Samuels so Sachin’s record now sits in second place.
- Last, but by no means least, Sachin has a huge place in Cricket World Cup history for a number of reasons. He played six ICC Cricket World Cups spanning from 1992–2011!
- The 2003 ICC Cricket World Cup held in South Africa, Kenya and Zimbabwe was a HUGE one for him. Scoring an incredible 673 runs; he was named the ‘Man of the Tournament’. That record of 673 in 11 games remains the record for most runs in a series
- In his last and most memorable World Cup campaign in 2011, Sachin helped his side to victory on home soil. And Team India came away as world champions. Besides ending his World Cup journey with the winning team, Sachin also came away with a plethora of remarkable achievments that still stand unbeaten: for example having scored the most runs in world cup history at 2,278
- Sachin also has six world cup centuries, the only player who’s managed to level this record is Rohit Sharma after his terrific 2019 World Cup performance
With records like this it’s NO wonder the Master Blaster is regarded as the God of cricket! I’ve really enjoyed taking a trip down memory lane. I hope you have too with this article. Thanks for reading and do follow for more cricket content.