Sachin Tendulkar On Twitter

This is possibly the farthest that the phenomenon of celebritydom becoming deliciously approachable to the common man can go. Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar, hailed the God of cricket around the world - and to watch whose romance with the bat an entire cricket-crazy nation is known to come to a standstill - joined the popular social networking site Twitter at the stroke of 12 last night.

Tweeting from his Blackberry under the handle (identity or name on Twitter) @sachin_rt, he stressed that it was indeed him, and even linked a picture of himself with his eyes closed, to prove his point.

The masterblaster began his innings on Twitter with his first tweet, "Finally the original SRT is on twitter n the first thing I'd like to do is wish my colleagues the best in the windies."

Ever since he began tweeting, he has mentioned his childhood friend Atul Ranade and teammate Virender Sehwag, apart from mentioning Vinod Chopra and Atul Kasbekar.

Atul Kasebar, a well-known Indian photographer specializing in media, film and fashion photography, claimed credit for bringing Sachin onto Twitter, saying "Yes its true, I finally got the king on board."

Within 13 hours, by today afternoon, Sachin has more 28,500 followers following his tweets, and has been listed under approximately 635 lists by his followers. His follower count continues to increase exponentially, at a rate of almost a 1,000 every 10 minutes. He is currently following 2 of his mates, Atul Kasbekar and Zaheer Khan.