Tendulkar was born to a Rajapur Saraswat Brahmin Maharashtrians Marathi family on April 24, 1973, at Nirmal Nursing Home in Dadar, Bombay. His mother, Rajni, worked in the insurance field, while his father, Ramesh Tendulkar, was a Marathi-language author and poet. He is regarded by many as one of the greatest batters of all time.
When Tendulkar was 11 years old, he received his first bat. In a school game at the age of 14, he utilized it to score 329 points out of a 664-point world record stand. At age 16 years 205 days, he became India's youngest Test (international) cricketer, making his debut against Pakistan in Karachi in November 1989. A year later, he hit a century on his first-class debut for Bombay (Mumbai). He made two century in Australia when he was 18 years old (148 in Sydney and 114 in Perth), and he also struck 179 against the West Indies in 1994. Tendulkar, at 23 years old, was named captain of his nation's squad in August 1996.
For his exceptional performance in the 1997–98 season, he was selected in 1998 for the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award, the highest honor awarded to an Indian athlete. He completed his playing career with records for the most career international runs (34,357) and Test runs (15,921) later that year. In 2013, he ended a six-year stay with the Indian Premier League (as a member of the Mumbai Indians) and retired from Test cricket. Tendulkar was routinely rated as one of the top batters in the game during the course of his lengthy career.
The first active athlete to join the Rajya Sabha, the upper chamber of the Indian parliament, Tendulkar was nominated for the position, and his term expired in 2018. He was the first athlete to earn the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian honor, in 2014. 2019 saw Tendulkar's enshrinement in the International Cricket Council Hall of Fame.