What Sachin means to me

I’m not a sports person. I don’t know any rules in any sports, except that I can understand when a ‘goal’ happens in soccer. Never felt like watching any game except soccer during a couple of world cup matches, but that too was just to observe the moves. Never watched a cricket match too, except for once at a friend’s place to watch some game that Indian team played during cricket worldcup but what drove me to that was the friends’ company to booze. While almost all my friends, right from the childhood are crazy cricket fans. So I am not emotional about Sachin’s retirement and probably would never understand his legacy. What I understand is this – if there is one person about whom people in India would equally talk about with such love and admiration, one person about whom people in India would unitedly agree upon, irrespective of their religious/political/regional conflicts, one person that they looked upon as an icon, a role model as such – that was Sachin Tendulkar.