Sachin holds a baby Karan, now a 16-year-old who spoke to The Telegraph, in his arms. Courtesy: Karan Muzumdar

Nobody plays much cricket here any more. Nobody writes much literature, either.

Young men and children at Sahitya Sahawas, the middle-class cooperative housing society of litterateurs where Sachin Tendulkar lived till he was 27, prefer football.

The society, which came up in the 1970s, was once home to some of the biggest names in Marathi literature. Sachin's father Ramesh was among them. Sachin moved out after the birth of son Arjun.

Today, the children play on the lawns where a young Sachin and his buddies created a ruckus playing cricket.

On Thursday, the Bandra East complex was quiet. About 30 families had left for the Wankhede to watch Sachin play his last Test.

“He sent tickets for them,” said Shivanand Nayak, 24, a law intern whose family had been the Tendulkars’ neighbours since 1985. Shivanand didn’t have Wankhede tickets.

“There were limited tickets for his closest friends. I could have asked Ajit (Sachin’s elder brother and mentor) but did not feel like badgering him,” he said.

Shivanand was sitting on the steps of one of the 12 four-storey buildings that make up Sahitya Sahawas, planning for the society’s annual cricket match with two teenagers: Karan Muzumdar, 16, and Sushrut Phadke, 17.

They were wondering if they could put together a good team to take on Sachin’s contemporaries in the society who had been thrashing them the past couple of years.

“The problem is that most people here like to play soccer, including Sushrut here,” Shivanand complained.

“My favourite is Messi. I’m not much into cricket though I do catch the IPL matches on TV at times,” Sushrut smiled.

The Class XII science student, blamed intense academic pressure for not participating in Sahitya Sahawas’s annual cricket match as a player.

He suddenly turned round and ribbed Shivanand, calling him a turncoat: “He was a football player before he fell in love with cricket. He is split between the two sports.”

Shivanand and a group of friends had formed a football team called the Spartans, which eventually went on to play in the Mumbai District Football Association tournament. “We started off in the sixth division but climbed to the first division in 2011. Then Air India poached some of our top players,” Shivanand said.

“I played cricket too as a child, and then for my college for a while.”

Sachin, Shivanand recalled, would watch him and his friends wield their bats from his balcony, which overlooked the society’s lawns. “But he never commented.”

A couple of young boys and girls, who looked between 10 and 12, came out of a building dressed in shorts and football boots or basketball sneakers, got into a car and left.

“Cricket is just one of the sports we play. Sachin himself is interested in a lot of sports. Before he left the society in the year 2000, he would sometimes come and play table tennis with me and my friends in one of the parking lots,” Shivanand remembered.

A few years ago, Sachin gave the society money to get the uneven cement floor tiled so the children would not trip over while playing TT.

Sachin and Anjali lived on the third floor of the Ushakaal building — the flat has been sold — while Ajit lived on the fourth floor. Shivanand, who lives on the first floor, remembers how the society children would call Anjali “tai” (elder sister).

'She hated that and insisted we call her Anjali, and we loved to tease her,” he smiled.

Ajit still lives in the fourth-floor flat. Karan, a Class XI science student, has no memories of the celebrated neighbour: he was a baby when the cricketer left.

“He was a close friend of my uncle, Nimish Muzumdar. I’m told Sachin carried me in his arms when I was a baby,” said Karan, who plays TT and is a club-level swimmer.

Karan and Sushrut were not watching Sachin on TV on Thursday. They were playing TT in the parking lot on the same board on which Sachin once played.

“But I’m going to play in the annual cricket match on December 25,” Karan said.

Sachin played this annual match a couple of times even after becoming a Test cricketer. Sahitya Sahawas would be very happy if he dropped by this Christmas Day.