From the archive: When Wankhede witnessed Tendulkar’s final bow

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The Wankhede has changed since 2013. There are new stands, new screens, a new press box. The pitch still sits in the same place, and on quiet afternoons you can still find the spot where Sachin Tendulkar bent down and touched the surface.

The day itself was not a great cricket match. It was something else: a collective farewell, staged in the one ground that had watched him grow up.

“I have seen the crowd do many things,” said a steward who has worked at the ground for thirty years. “That day, they did not want to leave. They just stood there.”

This is the Wankhede that Rohit Sharma plays for now. The ground remembers.