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To us, the story of Tendulkar is unlike any other cricketing story. Gavaskar through his time and Kapil Dev who followed him were iconic cricketers but nothing has remotely matched the frenzy of modern cricket in India coinciding with the era of Tendulkar. How does he remain so calm? How does he handle this unimaginable pressure? How supreme must his love for the game be that he finds a nation’s expectations not weighing him down? He still has time to greet the young boy who comes to him for an autograph. He is polite to the hordes of journalists wanting a sound bite. He manages to present himself with such poise in the face of mercurial and whimsical assessment of his batting. People talk of Dhoni’s calmness under all circumstances, but spare a thought for Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar whose genius is under the microscope of a billion people.
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S. Giridhar (Mid-Wicket Tales: From Trumper to Tendulkar)