The young boy with his curly locks and chubby cheeks - for whom the world wasn't enough. Obliged by the early detection of his prodigious talent and hurled into the world of fame and glory.
Never once did those young but firm shoulders give in - the nation rejoiced in hope and smiles to the messiah of the game. The willow that resounded even louder than the collective rants of all his cynics.
CNN-IBN retraces those first footsteps - this is how the journey started for Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar.
To give us an insight into his early years, a man who covered Tendulkar's first series in Pakistan, journalist Pradeep Magazine, and his first captain at a senior club level, Hemant Kenkre from Mumbai, joined CNN-IBN.
Kenkre has known Tendulkar even before he started playing for India. He was his first captain at senior club level. It is understood that the Cricket Club of India had to alter its rules to accommodate an Under-18 cricketer to play for them.
"It's a very strange thing," Kenkre says. "CCI was playing a game against Shivaji Park Youngsters at the famous Shivaji Park Gymkhana which is the cradle of Indian cricket. Ramakant Achrekar, who was his coach, asked me to come and watch him and also try to get the senior persons from the club there so that we could get him into the club.
"There was nobody better than the President of the club who happened to be a former Indian Test cricketer, Madhav Apte, who was playing that game when Sachin played against CCI," he adds. "And on a rank bad turner, Sachin scored a brilliant 70-odd runs and Apte had no doubt that he had to change the rules. We did decide to take him as a playing member of the side, but none of us realised that he was not 18. And if you're not 18 even today, you can't enter the club.
"Eventually, it was Milind Rege, Apte and the late Raj Singh Dungarpur, who convinced the club committee to change the rules and they did," he says. "Sachin Tendulkar then became the first person in the history of cricket in India who could enter the Club House at an age younger than 18."
Veteran journalist Pradeep Magazine has followed Sachin Tendulkar ever since his first tour of Pakistan in 1989. Magazine recalls Tendulkar to be a frail 16-year-old, wondering if India had thrown him in front of sharks, referring to the Pakistan fast bowlers in their prime.
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"He got out in the first innings for nothing or very few runs," Magazine says.
"Everyone thought we might have made a mistake. But then when he came back, hitting Abdul Qadir, one of the great leg-spinners, for all those sixes, standing up to Waqar Younis, Imran and Wasim Akram, one could realise that he wasn't just a boy. He had the strength and the technique to withstand any attack. To have seen him perform at that age, we knew there were great things ahead of him."
Asked what was the perception of the media after looking at Tendulkar, Magazine says: "I don't think India had seen an attacking player like Sachin before. Yes. there were. There was Sandeep Patil and others who would tear into rival attacks. But even at that young age, Sachin gave you the impression that he not only had the temperament and technique to stay there, he had it in him to dominate an attack.
"Once we saw that, we felt that maybe India had found a Viv Richards, someone who would be enjoying not just trying to save matches for India, but someone who would get back at rival bowlers. That impression gave a lot of thrill to everyone, and over the years he has successfully proved that whatever people thought of him was true," he adds.
At a press conference reflecting on his journey in international cricket, Tendulkar recalled a particular incident of losing his Moran pads which Kenkre had gifted to him during an Under-15 camp in Indore.
"I had a pair of Moran pads, which were given to me by a friend, who had inherited them from Sunil Gavaskar, they were very important to me. And in the middle of the camp of 12-14 days, that boy wasn't to be found in the camp," Tendulkar says.
"I would love to be the person who stole them," says Kenkre. "The pads which were used by Sunil Manohar Gavaskar and then used by Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar are a piece of history. I was just a repository of the history in between those two legends.
"It was (coach) Ramakant Achrekar who asked me to give him my pads," he adds. "He had rightly said that my cricketing career was over. I didn't even bat an eyelid and gave them to him. But when he came to pick the pads, I told him, 'Listen, I'm giving you a piece of history,' not realising whom I was talking to at the point of time.
"'I'm giving you the pads which belong to Gavaskar,' which he wore while scoring 221 at the Oval where India almost 400 runs against England. He was astounded while looking at those pads," he concludes.
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