He made his test debut as a 16-year-old in 1989, so Sachin Tendulkar has 21 years in international cricket to reflect on. This year has been one of his best.Tendulkar, now 37, capped 2010 with an unprecedented 50th career test century for India on day four of the first test against South Africa on Sunday. He now has 11 more centuries and over 2,000 more runs than his nearest rival.
With a record 175 tests and more than two decades at the crease, he should be slowing down or winding up. Not the little master.
Mr. Tendulkar began this year by making 200 in a one-day international, also against South Africa, the only time a batsman has achieved the feat.
He became the first man to 13,000 and then 14,000 test runs. He already has over 3,000 more ODI runs than anyone else.
In 2010, he passed Steve Waugh's 168 test appearances to become the most capped player ever. And he won the International Cricket Council's player of the year award. Now he's scored test century No. 50.
The appetite for runs, and success, hasn't been sated.
"Every innings I want to go out and score runs," Mr. Tendulkar said after Sunday's century. "There has never been a match when I've said, "If I get out early, it's OK." I've never thought like that. So it's extremely important to have that hunger and it's the hunger that keeps one going.
"I'm glad that it's still there."
So is India.
Mr. Tendulkar has been a key part of its recent rise to the top of the test rankings. He is the world's most worshipped cricketer, the biggest sporting star in India, and the game's most successful batsman.
His post-match news conference on Sunday was carried live on TV back in India. Indian reporters said the 50th hundred was what the entire nation was waiting for, what all Indians were hoping for.
They weren't exaggerating.
Mr. Tendulkar has carried the expectations of a country of cricket fans for the best part of two decades. It hasn't appeared to affect his run-making, and certainly didn't in 2010.
In tests, he has powered to seven centuries this year, two of them double hundreds, for the second-highest return in a calendar year after Pakistan batsman Mohammad Yousuf's nine 100s in 2006. Mr. Tendulkar still has one test to play this year.
"I've just been batting, and enjoying my batting," he said. "Sometimes you are striking the ball really well and that is the time you need to cash in as much as possible. I've tried to do that.
"Every time I go out, the country needs me .. it's never, If I don't score it doesn't matter."
