A Tendulkar with a Tennis Elbow had once sent an entire country scrambling for the medical dictionary. He was the national phenomenon who never fell to the picketing of the young or the protesting of his detractors. It wasn't just the strokes that captured our imagination, but also the little trinkets that came with the man. We rolled up our bracelets at funerals, just like he did when deliberating on the field; and we made that abdominal guard-adjusting motion when playing underarm cricket with tennis balls.

Before we start with the review, let me clarify that I am not a cricket nut at all, which means that there was no special place for Sachin Tendulkar in my heart as such... but that was before I saw James Erskine's Sachin-A Billion Dreams. What surprised me was that despite having zero interest in cricket, I cheered, whistled, winced and held back my tears alongwith the rest of the audience during the screening as if I have been following the game since childhood.

A neatly framed autograph of Sachin Tendulkar sits on the wall of my room. Although, a prized possession, I hadn't managed to look at it in a long time. Today, I look at it with renewed fondness. Probably because watching 'Sachin: A Billion Dreams' took me back in time, reminding me of how, as a child, I'd join scores of Indians to cheer for the man, who held the pulse of the nation in his gloved fist. Sachin Tendulkar isn't just a cricketer, he is an overwhelming emotion.

Well, you know the story... it's about the fantastic journey of Sachin Tendulkar from the time when he was a mischievous kid, to that moment when he bid farewell to cricket and left many in tears. His childhood is shown through a dramatic representation, through actors who play his little self, as well as his family and coach, Ramakant Achrekar. Once he enters professional cricket, rest of the movie is told through a series of snippets and real footage, narrated by none other than the God of Cricket himself.

Director James Erskine does not try much in his film Sachin: A Billion Dreams. The content is already explosive. It is the stuff of blockbusters, the life of Sachin Tendulkar, that is. Throughout the two-hour-plus running time, most of the film consists of footage from Sachin's pivotal moments on the 22 yards, occasionally punctuated by Sachin's commentary in the present day. Rest of the time, other players or family members are looking back, eyes glowing, and speaking of Sachin Tendulkar in the superlative. There was no way this could go wrong and it did not.

Sachin Tendulkar is not a name, but an emotion. Director James Erskine brings for you all an emotional documentation of Sachin's journey on celluloid, right from his childhood to becoming India's most celebrated player, his failures as an Indian captain to winning the 2011 World Cup at the Wankhede stadium, Mumbai against Sri Lanka and much more.

Sachin A Billion Dreams, the 'authorised' bio-pic of Sachin Tendulkar gives us exactly what it promises: a glowing portrait of a sports star and a legend-in-his-lifetime, whose fortunes are connected to a billion dreams, hopes and aspirations of cricket-mad India. What you get in the 2 hours 20 minute docu-feature is Everything You Knew About Sachin Because You Didn't Need To Ask, because practically everything he's done on-field since he was 16 has been chronicled by breathless commentators around the world.

Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar is a name that has been etched in our heads as being the 'God of Cricket'. While many may call him gifted, it is in this film, you truly see his inspiring journey and the fact that nothing comes easy without hardships. The film chronicles his journey from being a notorious child, to his brother Ajit Tendulkar recognizing his talent and recommending him to Coach Ramakant Achrekar to train him in the game.

You always know what you are in for in a biographical drama. You have seen or read about those amazing sports icons achieving against odds and with meagre means. You want to relive the nostalgia around them and if that comes with some untold stories, nothing could be better than that. On that account, Sachin A Billion Dreams offers a heavy dose of the glorious '90s, an era in which the BCCI became the superpower of world cricket.

When the protagonist has been the collective voice and conscience of India's cricketing history, then he's a tough subject to make a film on. Naturally, James Erskine puts Sachin on a pedestal and tells the story with an unnatural amount of reverence. It's a treat to get a peek into Sachin's childhood. And it's also a fan-shriek moment to see footage of him in his personal space, looped to Dire Straits and Bappi Lahiri with his wife Anjali, his children-Arjun and Sara, his family and friends. The fact that Sachin is the sutradhar(narrator)who walks the viewer through his victories and injuries is an additional bonus.

The year was 2009. Stand-up comedy was barely a crawl in India, and from those pioneering early sets performed late at night in Bombay, I remember only one gag. At the time, bullying politicians were divisively calling for Maharashtrian signboards everywhere and for 'outsiders' to leave, going against the welcoming heart of maximum city. It was in this charged atmosphere that a bright young comic called Rohan Joshi said he, as a Maharashtrian wounded by this communality, would nevertheless offer a couple of words on behalf of Maharashtrians everywhere. The night was full of barely amused and judgemental drinkers, and Joshi was very, very green, but with two words he brought the house down, rousingly and immediately. "Sachin Tendulkar."