Sachin Tendulkar: India's most worshipped cricketer By Dilanka MANNAKKARA Sachin Tendulkar is more than a cricketer for the cricket crazy Indians, he is idolised, given godly status and is even worshipped. Tendulkar has been the most complete batsman of his time, the most prolific runmaker of all time, and arguably the biggest cricket icon the game has ever known. His batting is based on the purest principles: perfect balance, economy of movement, precision in stroke-making, and that intangible quality given only to geniuses: anticipation. If he doesn't have a signature stroke - the upright, back-foot punch comes close - it is because he is equally proficient at each of the full range of orthodox shots (and plenty of improvised ones as well) and can pull them out at will. Sachin is like wine-the older he gets the better he becomes. His record speaks for itself. Tendulkar's considerable achievements seem greater when looked at in the light of the burden of expectations he has had to bear from his adoring, but somewhat unreasonable followers, who have been prone to regard anything less than a hundred in each innings as a failure. The aura may have dimmed, if only slightly, as the years on the international circuit have taken their toll on the body, but Tendulkar remains, by a distance, the most worshipped cricketer in the world. He has played 36 games in the World Cup and has scored a mammoth 1796 with a staggering average of 57 and a strike rate of 88. The 2011 edition will be his sixth World Cup appearance. He currently holds the record for the most hundreds in both Tests and ODIs - remarkable, considering he didn't score his first ODI hundred till his 79th match. Incredibly, he retains a divine enthusiasm for the game, and seems to be untouched by age: at 36 years and 306 days he broke a 40-year-old barrier by scoring the first double-century in one-day cricket. It now seems inevitable that he will become the first cricketer to score 100 international hundreds, which like Don Bradman's batting average, could be a mark that lasts for ever. There are no apparent weaknesses in Tendulkar's game. He can score all around the wicket, off both front foot and back, can tune his technique to suit every condition, temper his game to suit every situation, and has made runs in all parts of the world in all conditions. Some of his finest performances have come against Australia, the overwhelmingly dominant team of his era. His century as a 19-year-old on a lightning-fast pitch at the WACA is considered one of the best innings ever to have been played in Australia.A few years later he received the ultimate compliment from the ultimate batsman: Don Bradmon confided to his wife that Tendulkar reminded him of himself. Blessed with the keenest of cricket minds, and armed with a loathing for losing, Tendulkar set about doing what it took to become one of the best batsmen in the world.His greatness was established early: he was only 16 when he made his Test debut. He was hit on the mouth by Waqar Younis, but continued to bat, in a blood-soaked shirt. His first Test hundred, a match-saving one at Old Trafford, came when he was 17, and he had 16 Test hundreds before he turned 25. In 2000 he became the first batsman to have scored 50 international hundreds, in 2008 he passed Brian Lara as the leading Test run-scorer, and in the years after, he went past 13,000 Test runs, 30,000 international runs, and in 2010 became the first player to score 50 Test centuries.