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Irrespective of the score, whenever Sachin Tendulkar comes to bat he is under pressure. The pressure comes from all those people who look up to him, who pray that he gets a century, who cheer like India has already won when he comes in to bat, and who silently troop out of the stands once he gets out. When a visiting team comes to India, they know whom the Indians look up to. While they love watching India play, there is no doubt that Tendulkar is the player they love watching most. There is a buzz when he comes in to bat and if he fails, the crowd goes quiet for the rest of the game.

The great player that he is, Tendulkar gets a fair bit of adulation wherever he goes. Australians love their sportsmen and know a champion when they see one. Out here in Australia, he is seen as a great champ and is highly regarded by everybody who follows the game.

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One of the significant reasons for this is the praise that Sir Don Bradman lavished on him a couple of years ago. Sir Don had said that Tendulkar reminded him of the way he used to play. While I don't quite agree with that ­ the little I've seen of Bradman on film proves he was in a different league ­ people in Australia sat up and took notice. Whenever Sir Don spoke, Australians did take note of what he said, and while some like me may not have agreed with him on this point, their regard for Tendulkar only grew.

Like most Australians, the first look I got of him was when he came on tour in the early nineties. He was only 18 years old, but handled the conditions remarkably well. He scored two Test centuries, including one in Perth, and negotiated the pace and bounce of the pitches with consummate ease. All who saw him on that tour knew that he was a player to watch out for. And Tendulkar has proved just that in the subsequent years.

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During the nineties, Brian Lara, Inzamam-ul-Haq and yours truly have often been spoken of as the best in the batting business, along with Tendulkar. However, I would rate Tendulkar higher than the rest. Lara comes close because he is a proven match-winner, but he does give the opposition chances. Tendulkar is technically superior, has every stroke in the book and some of his own, and above all is remarkably consistent. But these are not the qualities that set him apart or make him the great player he is. Those qualities are in the mind. His aggression, his knowledge of his abilities and limitations and his awareness of what the opposition bowlers are capable of are what make him remarkable. He always tries to control and dominate and this makes him an extremely dangerous player when he gets going.

The only flaw, if one can call it that, is that he can get carried away. I believe Tendulkar recently admitted that this is a drawback in his game. Sometimes he gets into the mindset of wanting to hit every ball to the boundary, and that over-confidence sometimes leads to his dismissal. But if I know the guy, he will soon be working on that aspect of his game as well. While Tendulkar is a master of both forms of the game, he has the one-day game worked out pretty well. This was in evidence in the one-day series between India and Australia. In the first two games he was in ominous touch but was dismissed because of his over-confidence. He decided he was worth more than 35 explosive runs in each match and changed his approach in the third game. Result: a superb century in which he did not murder the opening bowlers like in the first two games, but still managed to get a century at more than a run a ball.

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Add to that the fact that he is an underrated bowler and you know why the Indians love this wonderful cricketer so much. It would be very difficult to pick any one knock and term it as the best I've seen because Tendulkar has always saved his best for Australia. It is also very difficult to predict how many centuries he will get before he retires. I reckon he'll play another 8 to 10 years, and would be surprised if he does not get more than 40 centuries.

I personally love to watch him bat from my position in the slips. While I keep hoping he gets out, I must admit that his strokeplay is a treat to watch from that position. A great ambassador for the game, he is one of those players who will be regarded as an all-time great long after he has stopped playing.

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