Known to millions, known by few, this deity of the crease is bigger than Becks

The Sachin Tendulkar interview: The worshipped star of India is here, ready to show he is more than a one-day wonder. Stephen Brenkley meets him

When it all began in Karachi 13 years ago it was difficult to tell that the little dumpy kid would become a god. He was a prodigy all right, but he knew nothing of the high-octane stuff of Test cricket.

Sachin Tendulkar was 16 years old, making his first appearance for India, and Wasim Akram, of Pakistan, made up his mind to give him the hurry-up. The ball shaved the new kid's dark curls. "Akram was bowling very fast," recalled Tendulkar much later. "I think he bowled four bouncers in a row. It was very difficult and I thought I wasn't going to play Test cricket again." Nine months later, he was still only 17 when he went out at Old Trafford with India on 109 for 4, which was soon 127 for 5. He saved the match with 119 not out, his maiden Test hundred.

At The Oval in early September, if his body holds up, Tendulkar will play his 100th Test match. He is 12 short of 300 limited-overs internationals. In Tests, he is one of only 10 batsmen to score more than 8,000 runs, in one-dayers he is alone in accruing more than 11,000 and this year he will become the first past 20,000 international runs. He has scored 60 international hundreds. None has been boring.

By any standards, Tendulkar is a phenomenon, the best batsman in the world at present and one of the best three or four of all time. He is among the most famous people on the planet and in a significant area of it he is pretty much all that counts outside of the ordinary drudgery of everyday life. To a billion Indians at home and many more among the Asian diaspora he is a deity. Many of their lives depend on his performances.

He is in England for his fourth visit with his team, his fifth in all counting his unlikely season with Yorkshire. Once, he might have thought he would never play Test cricket again, now he can hardly see a day when he will give it up.

When the Indians bowled up at Lord's for practice last Thursday, he spoke. "I don't know when I'm going to retire so I can't set a target of how many hundreds I might score," he said. "I'm just going to go on and on and enjoy myself. It's important that I enjoy my cricket, rather than thinking about scoring 40 hundreds or whatever and putting pressure on myself. Just go out and play." For the best part of half an hour Smashin' Sachin, the Little Master, dead-batted in a way that belied his thrilling strokeplay in another arena.

Fame, celebrity and riches are all his beyond the dreams or imagination of the average wannabe. Imagine the fame that has descended on David Beckham and think again. Sachin is bigger than Becks. Much bigger actually, because his effect on his worshippers is so profound.

Last November in Port Elizabeth he was spotted apparently tampering with the ball in a Test match against South Africa. Along with five other Indian players he was penalised by the match referee, Mike Denness, and was fined 75 per cent of his match fee.

Back home, they might have taken a quintet of punishments. But not one issued to Tendulkar. The world game virtually ground to a halt. Eventually, the refusal of the International Cricket Council to back down got it going again, though Tendulkar's punishment was reduced from ball tampering to failing to inform the umpire that he was cleaning the ball. It was a near thing. Tendulkar stayed silent. His worshippers simply increased their idolatry.

At Bombay last February, the one-day series between India and England stood at 3-2. The ground was brim full, a thrilling finish was in prospect and then Sachin was out. In droves, like pilgrims in reverse, they streamed out of the ground as tears streamed out of their eyes.

"It's really difficult," said Tendulkar. "One doesn't get enough privacy. It's the price you pay for it. In India because of the population and the amount of following it's difficult for any of our cricketers to go out and do what a normal person would do. There are times when you can't go out with your family and take your kids to the park. But there are advantages to being in this position as well. I have no regrets because I really, really enjoy the support and adulation."

He is gentle, polite, diffident and modest while knowing how good he is. As he went through the public relations motions, demurring at no question but never remotely suggesting that the devil might be in the detail of his answers, it was again clear. This man is known to millions upon millions, yet nobody knows him. Sachin might have no privacy but that cannot prevent him keeping himself to himself.

A book called Sachin, The Story of the World's Greatest Batsman has just been published and that hardly takes the story any further. It is known that he is married to Anjali, a paediatrician, and they have a daughter, Sara, and a son, Arjun. Until last year he had lived all his life in the same block of flats in Bandra (East), a district of Bombay. Last year he moved as far as Bandra (West).

His favourite music used to be Dire Straits, he now likes old Hindi stuff as well as Western fare. As he said in answer to a question last Thursday, he has paid scant attention to the football World Cup and tends more to Formula One and tennis. He intends to visit Wimbledon.

Almost exactly a year ago he signed the most lucrative deal for a cricketer. It was reported to be worth £12 million over five years. The usual advertisements and endorsements (no tobacco or alcohol at his insistence) are likely to be involved. So, too, is a worldwide chain of restaurants called Tendulkar's. No doubt their speciality will be seafood, which is his favourite.

To which it might be appropriate to ask: is that all there is? Probably not, but possibly so given the vast amount of time he spends either on the cricket field, or preparing for matches, or travelling to them, or in some foreign country. Tendulkar appears to have come to terms with his lot.

He is almost unruffleable at the crease, one of the few whom it is simply not worth sledging. England got to him on their winter tour by asking their left-arm spinner, Ashley Giles, to bowl over the wicket into the rough. The batsman eventually gave the bowler the charge and was stumped for the first time in Tests.

Against the spirit of the game, thundered the purists. "Part of the game," said Sachin at Lord's. "I felt it was all within the laws and I felt in control. It was designed to test my patience." So there, purists.

He was almost urbane in handling himself last week. There have been two recent fusses surrounding him at home. The first was his 29th Test century, which was immensely significant because it put him level with Sir Donald Bradman.

"It's a very special thing equalling Sir Don's record, for the only time my name could be next to his," said Tendulkar, sounding perfectly genuine about his reverence for The Don. As indeed was The Don for Sachin. The great Australian saw himself in the great Indian.

After The Don died it transpired that Sachin was the only contemporary player to make Bradman's All-Time XI. Of Sachin Bradman once observed: "I saw him playing on television and was struck by his technique, so I asked my wife to come and look at him. Now I have never seen myself play but I felt that this player is playing much the same as I used to play and she looked at him and said, 'Yes, there is a similarity between the two: high compactness, technique, stroke production. It all seemed to gel'."

The second fuss this year has been his loss of form. Of course, these things are relative and what is deemed a poor trot in Tendulkar's case would simply be the normal, expected hiatus between decent scores for anybody else. In the Test series in West Indies in April and May he had consecutive scores of 0, 0, 8 and 0. Few believed it was happening. Half the Indian population probably went into denial.

But debate was entered. Sunil Gavaskar, another Indian icon, whose record of 34 Test centuries and aggregate of 10,122 Test runs he is now pursuing, said Tendulkar was playing too much across the line of the ball and making himself vulnerable to lbw appeals. Andy Roberts, the former West Indies fast bowler, also joined in by suggesting that the little master got behind the ball so much and did not push out his leg, so that he had become a leg-before candidate.

Tendulkar shrugged it off. "It's part of the game, it happened to me for the first time in 13 years of cricket. I think it happens to all players. I didn't really feel out of form because in four innings I faced 15 balls. I felt there was nothing wrong. It was just those four innings when I didn't bat very well."

Nor did he consider it a particularly lean period. That particular low quartet was bracketed in the series by 79 and 117, and 41 and 86. "I scored 350 runs in the series and if you played five Tests and scored seven fifties you'd be very happy." It was 331 runs actually, but you saw his point, although his average of merely 41 was 16 points adrift of his lifetime average.

Still, the point about his candidacy for lbw might be valid. In his last 10 innings he has fallen that way six times, having gone similarly on 15 occasions in the previous 144. It cannot all be misguided umpiring.

He seemed sanguine, too, about his possible move down the order in one-dayers this summer, as India, like England, decide on their best combination for the World Cup. The new kid on the block, Virender Sehwag, is the opening flavour of the month.

A banner was erected in India during the winter. It said: "If Sachin is another Bradman, Sehwag is another Sachin." Not quite in either case. And while Sachin might be the best one-day batsman in the world, dropping him down the order seems risky and unnecessary. It took him 76 one-day innings to score a century. In those days he was not opening. Now he has 31 of them in 204 innings since, 30 of them as opener.

India play a lot of cricket, probably too much. Tendulkar at least conceded the possibility of being tired – though he denied burn-out. The team have a new fitness coach and they may need him: Tendulkar has picked up a string of injuries to toe, knee and shoulder lately.

"Yes, somewhere down the line, one would feel that, yeah, I've been playing for 12 months or 24 months and I need a break for a couple of months, just recharge the batteries and get back fresh. But as a kid I started playing cricket because I loved it and I still love it, the high you get from scoring and people wishing you well all the time. That really inspires me." He affects not to worry about playing in India, where expectations are so unreasonably high. But he likes England, has done well here, though he has never scored a one-day century against them.

What happens to him now is pretty obvious. He will keep on scoring runs, breaking records until there are none left to break. Sachin Tendulkar is a god and surely one of the good guys as well. He is also still, it is pleasing to note, little and dumpy.

Biography: Sachin Tendulkar

Born: 24 April 1973, Bombay.

Height: 5ft 4in.

Role: Right-hand bat, right-arm medium.

Test career: Debut India v Pakistan at Karachi, First Test, 1989-90. Has played 96 Tests (25 as captain); in 154 innings has scored 8,004 runs, averaging 57.58 with 29 centuries. Highest score of 217, versus New Zealand, 1999. Taken 27 wickets at 42.66.

One-day international career: Debut v Pakistan at Gujranwala, 1989-90. Has played 288 matches; in 280 innings has scored 11,168 runs at 44.14 with 31 centuries. Highest score of 186no. Has taken 106 wickets at 46.88.

First-class career: Has scored 15,875 runs at an average of 61.53 with 52 centuries, and has taken 51 wickets at 58.03.