Book review
He is a god in India and people believe luck shines in his hands... It is beyond chaos - it is a frantic appeal by a nation to one man.'
- Mathew Hayden on Sachin


In the twelve years that he has been in the public eye, Sachin Tendulkar has been explosive on the cricket field and just as reticent off it. He was barely fifteen years old when he first wrote his name into the record books with a stupendous 664-run partnership with his childhood friend Vinod Kambli. Two year later, he struck his first century in first-class cricket. At eighteen, he became the second youngest man to make a hundred in international cricket, and after that there was no looking back. Records tumbled by the wayside as he captivated audiences first in his home city of Mumbai, then in the rest of India and all over the cricket-playing world. Today, Sachin is widely accepted as the world's finest batsman, with impeccable technique, an incredible array of strokes, and maturity far beyond his years. His teammates and friends swear by him, his fans worship him and there are few, if any, critics of his game or his temperament.

In this biography of the hero of Indian cricket, sports writer Gulu Ezekiel mines interviews, press reports and conversations over the last decade to create an accurate and sympathetic account of the man and his first passion: cricket. He tracks Sachin from his childhood when he first caught the bug of cricket, through his early performances in the Ranji Trophy and other domestic tournaments, and follows him on his meteoric rise to international stardom. With unfailing attention to detail, he reconstructs the crucial matches and events that marked Sachin's career and unravels for us the magic of the charismatic cricketer whom Wisden once dubbed 'bigger than Jesus'.

• Authoritative biography of India’s greatest sports icon

• Complete and detailed statistics: innings by innings

• 400 pages plus a photo section

‘The first comprehensive biography of master batsman Sachin Tendulkar is out.

Pg 416 /paperback /6/15/2002

About the author Gulu Ezekiel started his career in sports journalism with Indian Express in Chennai in 1982 before moving to New Delhi in 1991. He has been Sports Editor at the Asian Age, NDTV and indya.com and has contributed to more than 50 publications in India and around the world. He launched GE Features, a features and syndication company, in August 2001. Gulu is the author of several sports books including Great One-day Internationals( 1999) and The Story of the World Cup (1996).