Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar (born 24 April 1973) is a former Indian
cricketer widely acknowledged as the greatest
batsman of the modern generation and by many as the greatest cricketer of all time. He took up cricket at the age of eleven, made his
Test debut against
Pakistan at the age of sixteen, and went on to represent
Mumbai domestically and
India internationally for close to twenty-four years. He is the only player to have
scored one hundred international centuries, the first batsman to score a
double century in a
One Day International, and the only player to complete more than 30,000
runs in international cricket. In October 2013, he became the 16th player and first Indian to aggregate 50,000 runs in all recognized cricket (
first-class,
List A and
Twenty20combined).
In 2002,
Wisden Cricketers' Almanack ranked him the second greatest Test batsman of all time, behind
Don Bradman, and the second greatest ODI batsman of all time, behind
Viv Richards. Later in his career, Tendulkar was a part of the Indian team that won the
2011 World Cup, his first win in six
World Cup appearances for India. He had previously been named "Player of the Tournament" at the
2003 edition of the tournament, held in South Africa. In 2013, he was the only Indian cricketer included in an all-time Test World XI named to mark the 150th anniversary of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack.Tendulkar received the
Arjuna Award in 1994 for outstanding sporting achievement, the
Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award in 1997, India's highest sporting honour, and the
Padma Shri and
Padma Vibhushan awards in 1999 and 2008, respectively, India's fourth and second highest civilian awards and within a few hours of ending of his final match on 16 November 2013, the
Prime Minister's Office announced the decision to award Tendulkar with the
Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award, making him the youngest recipient to date and the first ever sportsperson to receive the award. He also won the 2010
Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy for cricketer of the year at the ICC awards. In 2012, Tendulkar was nominated to
Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the
Parliament of India. He was also the first sportsperson (and the first without an aviation background) to be awarded the honorary rank of
Group Captain by the
Indian Air Force. In 2012, he was named an Honorary
Member of the Order of Australia.In December 2012, Tendulkar announced his retirement from ODIs. He retired from Twenty20 cricket in October 2013, and subsequently
announced his retirement from all forms of cricket, retiring on 16 November 2013 after playing his
200th and final Test match, against the
West Indies in Mumbai's
Wankhede Stadium. Tendulkar played 664 international cricket matches in total, scoring 34,357 runs.