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A cricketing chapter closes

Its been nearly a month now since Tendulkar announced his retirement from one-day internationals but I don't think its fully sunk in for me that I won't ever see him walk out to open the batting again in the India blues. Even though my first foray into following cricket was the fifty over world cup in 1987, I soon got hooked onto Test match cricket and have never really felt as passionately for the limited overs format since. Since the 1990s, one-day cricket (except World Cups) for me has always been more about following my favourite cricketers and how they perform and Tendulkar has always been in the top three in that list.

The numbers of course are awe-inspiring but what's more staggering is the consistency with which he kept churning them out over such a long period. To average nearly 45 over 463 matches boggles the mind to a degree I wouldn't have imagined possible. 463 matches. In terms of days of cricket, that equates to over 90 Test matches. The next closest (Jayasuriya) played only 18 ODIs fewer than Tendulkar but 84 fewer Test matches. And his closest rival in terms of hundreds (Ponting) made 19 fewer (30 vs. Tendulkar's 49). Amongst all 35 players who have scored 10 or more hundreds in ODIs, only two (Hashim Amla and Virat Kohli) take fewer innings to score a hundred (6 and 7.1 respectively vs. 9.2 for Tendulkar). And both of them are yet to play even a hundred games each so odds on that they will be behind Tendulkar soon.

But its not just the numbers that make it memorable. At the end of the day what will stay in mind for me is all of those magical innings that he played over 20+ years. The collaring of Abdul Qadir in '89, the rise to opener in '94, the World Cup in '96, Sharjah in '98, the 186* vs NZ in '99, the World Cup (again) in '03, the CB series finals in '08, the 175 vs Aus in '09, the double hundred against SA in '10, the list is endless. And the one magical non-innings moment will be his teammates chairing him after his biggest dream (India winning the world cup) finally came true at his fifth attempt. He was the last survivor amongst my five favourite "cricketers-I've-watched-the-most" (Waugh, Ambrose, Warne, and Akram being the others). The day is not far when he'll play his last Test match and when that day comes, my love of the game will probably not diminish but some corner of my cricketing mind will find that a certain door has shut forever.

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