Cricket Legend Sachin Tendulkar has been conferred with the Col. CK Nayudu Lifetime Achievement Award, making him the 31st recipient of the honor, at BCCI’s Naman Awards on Saturday.
The Col. CK Nayudu Lifetime Achievement Award was instituted in 1994 in honor of India’s first captain Col. C K Nayudu.
Tendulkar represented India in 664 international games.
Master Blaster, as he is known, holds the record for the highest number of Test and ODI runs in the history of cricket. Tendulkar’s 200 Test and 463 ODI appearances are also the highest by any player in the history of the game. He amassed 15,921 Test runs besides a whopping 18,426 in ODIs.
However, he played only one T20 International in his stellar career.
Considered the greatest batter of his era, Tendulkar was not just a prolific run-scorer but also an icon of the game, who played for more than two decades after debuting as a 16-year-old in a 1989 Test against Pakistan.
The well-documented and numerous batting records apart, Tendulkar was also a key member of India’s 2011 World Cup-winning team, which was his record sixth and last appearance in the showpiece.
At his peak, the diminutive right-hander could bring the nation to a standstill by simply walking out to bat.
His dismissal was the most sought-after among opposition teams, who did not hesitate to say that Tendulkar was the only Indian batter who could intimidate them.
Tendulkar’s emergence in the Indian cricketing scene happened at the same time when India witnessed economic liberalization and the curly-haired genius became a favorite of corporate India, thanks to a never-seen-before emotional connect with people from Kashmir to Kanyakumari.
When a 17-year-old Tendulkar scored a hundred at Perth on a treacherously bouncy WACA track, lot of teenagers found a hero.
When he scored the ‘Desert Storm hundred’ at Sharjah against Australia in 1998, a middle-aged man somewhere wished that he was his son.
When he withstood the pain and nearly took India to a victory against Pakistan in Chennai in 1999 and broke down, a billion hearts broke into pieces.
When he shed tears of joy while hugging Mahendra Singh Dhoni on April 2, 2011, a nation shared his happiness.
And in November 2013, when he left the field in front of his adoring fans in Mumbai, thousands lost cried hoping for him to continue.
