Personal information
Full name - Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar
Born - 24 April 1973 (1973-04-24) (age 38)
Bombay, Maharashtra, India
Nickname - Little Master, Tendlya,
The God of Cricket,
Master Blaster,
The Master,
The Little Champion,
Height - 5 ft 5 in (1.65 m)
Batting style - Right-handed
Bowling style - Right-arm leg spin, off spin, medium pace
Role - Batsman
International information
National side - India
Test debut (cap 187) 15 November 1989 v Pakistan
Last Test 2 January 2011 v South Africa
ODI debut (cap 74) 18 December 1989 v Pakistan
Last ODI 2 April 2011 v Sri Lanka
ODI shirt no. 10
Domestic team information
Years Team
1988–present Mumbai
2008–present Mumbai Indians (Indian Premier League)
1992 Yorkshire
Career statistics
Competition Test ODI FC LA
Matches 177 453 280 540
Runs scored 14, 692 18,111 23,585 21,663
Batting average 56.95 45.16 59.86 45.89
100s/50s 51/59 48/95 77/105 59/113
Top score 248* 200* 248* 200*
Balls bowled 4,096 8,032 7,461 10,220
Wickets 45 154 70 201
Bowling average 53.07 44.32 59.86 42.11
5 wickets in innings 0 2 0 2
10 wickets in match 0 n/a 0 n/a
Best bowling 3/10 5/32 3/10 5/32
Catches/stumpings 106/– 136/– 174/– 171/–
Tendulkar was born in Bombay (now Mumbai). His mother Rajni worked in the insurance industry, and his father Ramesh Tendulkar, a Marathi novelist, named Tendulkar after his favourite music director, Sachin Dev Burman. Tendulkar's elder brother Ajit encouraged him to play cricket. Tendulkar has two other siblings: a brother Nitin, and sister Savita.
Tendulkar attended Sharadashram Vidyamandir (High School),[where he began his cricketing career under the guidance of his coach and mentor, Ramakant Achrekar. During his school days he attended the MRF Pace Foundation 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.
When he was young, 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.
While at school, he developed a reputation as a child prodigy. He had become a common conversation point in Mumbai circles, where there were suggestions already that he would become one of the greats. 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 in 1988 with 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* 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.
At 14, Tendulkar was a ball boy for the India versus Zimbabwe game at the Wankhede Stadium during the 1987 World Cup.When he was 14, Indian batting legend Sunil Gavaskar gave him a pair of his own ultra light pads. "It was the greatest source of encouragement for me," he said nearly 20 years later after surpassing Gavaskar's world record of 34 Test centuries.On 24 May 1995,Sachin Tendulkar married Anjali, a paediatrician and daughter of Gujarati industrialist Anand Mehta and British social worker Annabel Mehta. They have two children, Sara (born 12 October 1997), and Arjun (born 24 September 1999). Anjali is six years elder to him.