Sachin Tendulkar scores his 100th international hundred in one-day-international between India and Bangladesh If simply surviving for that long is one obstacle, he has also had to cope with pressures of expectation on a scale unknown to other sportsman. To Indians he is a living god - a veritable little Lord Sachin. Other mortals have been deified from time to time, but their appeal has tended to be small and cultish. Tendulkar's devotees, essentially the whole of India and its diaspora, number a billion or more, their everyday lives genuinely affected by his fortunes with the bat. Outwardly, that mass devotion doesn't appear to have taken its toll for he retains a boyish face framed by a mop of dark curls. When competing, sportsmen are told to live in the moment and to blot distraction from their minds, something easier said than done when that amount of humanity is hoping and praying for you. Whether in response to it, or in an attempt to erase the pressures, Tendulkar, like the Mona Lisa, gives almost nothing of himself in public, living quietly between homes in Mumbai and England. Apart from a minor hoo-ha about some unpaid import duty on a Ferrari (fast cars enthuse him and he enjoys F1), and a match referee's charge for picking the seam (subsequently quashed by ICC when India's fans and administrators kicked up a stink), he has led a blemish-free existence drained of incident or innuendo. But a life led without the odd instinctive or reckless moment, except occasionally when he has bat in hand, is it any wonder he has kept playing for so long; the cricket field his one place of solace? A precocious talent when under the aegis of his school coach, Ramachand Achrekar, Tendulkar eventually honed his batting towards efficiency rather than entertainment. A decent technician, with a fine array of bottom-handed strokes (see how low that right hand is on the handle), he is not as talent-blessed as Brian Lara nor in possession of Vivian Richards" destructive power or presence. Yet, his hunger for runs is greater than either being on a par with Bradman's insatiable appetite, something rare in the modern era though England's Jonathan Trott has shown signs of a similar gluttony. It is that sheer single-mindedness to bat and bat and bat, rather than the fact that neither man topped five feet six, that once saw Bradman confide to his wife Jessie that Tendulkar was the batsman who reminded him most of himself. His first Test hundred came against England at Old Trafford in 1990, the summer of the small-seamed ball when the game's administrators, wearying of seeing bowlers prosper the previous year, reduced the strands of twine used in the seam. If that was fortuitous, the subsequent avalanche of runs suggests it wasn't a fluke. He has made hundreds against all countries but if he has a bogey side, it is Pakistan, against whom he has made just two Test hundreds in 18 matches. In his recent book, Shoaib Akhtar, the first bowler to break the 100mph barrier, claims Tendulkar was frightened of him. In Tests, Shoaib claimed his wicket three times which doesn't quite smack of a rabbit caught in headlights. I played against him twice, in Perth during the 1992 World Cup and in a warm-up game for the Nehru Cup three years earlier. He got 35 in the first and over fifty in the second, though he was not the only 16-year old to stand out in that second match. Vinod Kambli, the friend with whom he shared a mind-boggling stand of 664 in a school match in 1988, also made a half-century. With both subsequently picked for India, their paths looked twinned until Kambli discovered the seamier side of celebrity and fell out of favour to become a bit-part Bollywood actor. Tendulkar, by contrast, has kept an admirably straight bat and remained faithful to cricket for over 20 years, a calling that has set a record that will surely stand until the end of time.