When you are deeply invested in someone, he somehow becomes a part of you. I used to watch Sachin each time he went out to bat; in the process, he became a part of my subconscious. Irrationally, I felt I could understand and say what he would do next while batting. And it once happened that a few of us friends were in a pub called Ghetto when he was batting in a match against Sri Lanka. Randomly I started predicting what I felt Sachin would do next. And you can call it a bizarre coincidence, but things started happening precisely as I predicted. So I would say he would hit a six, and he did. Thereafter I’d say he would nudge the ball around for two overs and score between 10 and 12 runs, and it would happen exactly the same way. In my mind, I was batting with him, and he was a part of me. In all this, the waiter who was serving us was the most stunned and terrified. He may have thought I was a bookie and seemed confused about what was happening.

My first Sachin autograph is again a story. A very close friend of mine used to cut his hair, and one time when she mentioned that she was going to his house to cut his hair, I sent three things with her to be autographed. One of them was a copy of the Time magazine, which featured him on the cover playing his favourite cover drive with the caption ‘Burning Bright’. I still have the magazine, by the way. In fact, I mentioned it to him when I finally had a chance to meet him.

Suresh Raina on Sachin Tendulkar 

In a way, I have imbibed many things from Sachin, which have helped my career. The first thing is to stay true to the sport. With the kind of adulation and fame, he could have easily had a chip on his shoulder. He is Sachin Tendulkar, after all. But that’s where he is different. For him, it was always about hard work and about trying to learn. He is always trying to get better at what he does. Staying a student of the game and keep on improving. I have tried to do so in my profession, and Sachin has been a constant source of inspiration. That’s what he has been to me. A beacon of light which has unknowingly helped me along the way.

To tell you the truth, each time he got out, we felt unease as a collective nation. Our confidence dropped a little bit, and things weren’t the same for a while. We needed him out there for us to feel well. Feel normal and happy. He wasn’t batting for himself. Instead, he was batting for us all, for a collective called we lovingly call ‘India’.

Trisha Ghosal on Sachin Tendulkar