I never guessed that Sachin Tendulkar would eventually become one of the greatest batsmen to take guard on a cricket pitch.

The young Sachin I remember would sport a headband over his curly hair: a John McEnroe clone with a sulking look to match. But there was always something special in the way he hit the tennis ball. It took his brother Ajit and coach Ramakant Achrekar to see that he was a genius in waiting.

Ajit was my cricket mate, the captain of the local team. He once sent a very young Sachin — ten years our junior and barely taller than the stumps — to open the batting. There were silly jokes from the opposing team till the first ball came into contact with the sweet spot on his bat.

There has been enough said and written about his cricketing prowess. Shane Warne famously admitted to having nightmares of Sachin coming down the track and hitting him for a straight six. Sunil Gavaskar says he is the closest thing to batting perfection.

What few realize is how much he did to bring emotional stability to a country that was in flames because of the Mandal and mandir agitations, and had to live through an economic crisis as well. Like the baseball player Babe Ruth and cricketing great Don Bradman in the years of the Great Depression, Sachin was a beacon of hope.

And he also captured the zeitgeist of a post-reform nation. Rajdeep Sardesai was spot on in his Friday column in Hindustan Times: “Tendulkar is a free-spirited artiste who bats with the freedom of an India unshackled of its socialist baggage.”