Big, fat Indian wedding in Mumbai

Harsha Bhogle, in an open letter in the Indian Express, congratulates Sachin Tendulkar on a frutiful career and says the final match is not going to be any different from a big fat Indian wedding.

I am delighted you are going out bat in hand, that you are not forced out by injury. I remember seeing you in great pain in that first IPL when you were being forced back into rehab. You hated it because everyone else was playing and you couldn't. "I can take the pain but I can't stand this rehab" you had said. I had feared that one day your body would announce to you that it had had enough. It had a right to for you had driven it for twenty five years! I am delighted it is in decent shape for this last game. You still have to run that second run hard even if your legs occasionally remind you they are yours and not Virat Kohli's!

The crowds swelled during the first day of the Mumbai Test and the rumble grew the second Tendulkar walked out. Raja Sen, in his blog, writes about the scenes from the stands.

For what it's worth, he seemed to be enjoying it. The madness, the collective adulation, the indescribable hysteria. He looked around and played with exquisite fluency, his each poetic flourish making us achingly aware that we were seeing what we wouldn't, ever again.