Sachin Tendulkar has made poets of prose writers even if his strokeplay has demontrated the futility of conveying in words the brilliance of his batsmanship. As R C Robertson-Glasgow said in another context, he was "easy to watch, difficult to bowl to and impossible to write about." In this collection of essays by some of the finest writers on cricket, the attempt is not so much to pin Sachin down as to let him roam free: beyond statistics, above nationality, and above the need to explain. From the sublime to the ridiculous it is all here. As Peter Roebuck once said "Whenever I feel low I only need to remind myself how privileged I am to be writing on the game in the Tendulkar era"