Almost eighteen years to the day, in the 1992 World Cup, India took on Pakistan. That was the first match I watched, thanks to our babysitter who was a cricket fan as it turned out. A curly-haired guy got a half-century – whatever that meant I must have thought then. Important point was everyone was happy and later got happier because India won. It was a good day.

Probably an infantile obsession began that day for Sachin Tendulkar too seemed no more than a child in the world of men then. I hated that my brother had curly hair like him. So I tried to emulate him whilst playing gully cricket. All through my life I have bought bats with the same sticker on them as his bats – SG, Power and MRF – although I am yet to purchase one from the new range of Adidas bats he’s come out with.

It is astonishing how one man touches billions across the world. My own experience is but a tiny part of the world that we share with him. I think almost every one who follows the game ardently remembers what he was doing when he played this knock or that knock. There are 90-plus tons that he’s scored over twenty years and many more where he didn’t get to the three figure mark. But we remember most of them, and celebrate them all, like it’s each and every one of us who has scored those runs. I doubt if any one Australian remembers all of Ricky Ponting’s ODI or Test tons for that matter, or revolves his life around them. That, right there, is a measure of who the greater batsman is.

The generation that I belong to has grown up watching him play and are we blessed or what? Classroom discussions in school when he conjured up a dust-storm in Sharjah in ’98, the shock and anguish of the pain in ’99 against Pakistan, the continued discussions this time in the college cafeteria about the killer six off Shoaib Akhtar in the 2003 World Cup, burning off half a pack of Wills Classic when he was bowled for a duck in the crucial encounter against Sri Lanka four years later – these are but some of the prints that he has left on all of us, I am sure.

I must admit though that the feeling on seeing this 200 not out was quite different. I felt like shedding a few tears – joyous ones of course – for this was an overawing moment that I know I have lived for. A culmination of a childhood dream! A dream common to us all just like those memories – I forever wanted to see a double ton in ODI cricket and I wanted Sachin to make one. I got mine!

P.S – This post is the first one on this sports blog-based venture which is under construction and due for proper release sometime in March 2010. But 24th February 2010 was too good a day to wait for such trivial matters. Only Sachin Tendulkar can make us do such things – posting on an unfinished website.