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Born to bat SACHIN TENDULKAR will celebrate 20 years as an international in a week's time. It's a heck of a long time and it has gone in the blink of an eye. More... 20 not out Born to bat ... Tendulkar’s 20-year cricketing career has been an incredible journey on which he has scored an avalanche of runs - and made it look easy. Peter Roebuck November 8, 2009 SACHIN TENDULKAR will celebrate 20 years as an international in a week's time. It's a heck of a long time and it has gone in the blink of an eye. When Tendulkar first took guard in his country's colours, the Berlin Wall had just fallen, Nelson Mandela was behind bars, Allan Border was captaining Australia and India was a patronised country known for its dust, poverty, timid batsmen and other outdated caricatures. In those days Tendulkar was a tousle-haired cherub prepared to stand his ground against all comers, including Wasim Akram and the most menacing of the Australians, Merv Hughes. Now he is a tousle-haired elder still standing firm, still driving and cutting, still retaining some of the impudence of youth but nowadays bearing also the sagacity of age. It has been an incredible journey, a trip that figures alone cannot define. Not that the statistics lack weight. To the contrary they are astonishing, almost mind-boggling. Tendulkar has a scored an avalanche of runs, thousands upon thousands of them in every form of the game. He has reached three figures 87 times in the colours of his country and all the while has somehow retained his freshness, somehow avoided the mechanical, the repetitive and the predictable. Perhaps that has been part of it, the ability to retain the precious gift of youth so that it is not swamped by the knowledge that time alone can bring. Alongside Shane Warne, Tendulkar has been the most satisfying cricketer of his generation. The Indian master's feats are prodigious. He has scored as many runs overseas as in his backyard, has flogged Brett Lee at his fastest and Warne at his most obtuse, has flourished against swing and cut, prospered in damp and dry. Nor can his record be taken for granted. Batsmen exist primarily to score runs. It is a damnably difficult task made to look easy by a handful of expert practitioners. Others have promised and fallen back, undone by the demands, unable to meet the moment. Tendulkar has kept going, hunger unabated. In part he has lasted so long because there has been so little inner strain. It's hard to think of a player remotely comparable who has spent so little energy conquering himself. Throughout he has been able to concentrate on overcoming his opponents. But it has not only been about runs. Along the way Tendulkar has provided an unsurpassed blend of the sublime and the precise. In him, the technical and the natural sit side by side, friends not enemies, allies deep in conversation. Romantics talk about those early morning trips to Shivaji Park in Mumbai, and the child eager to erect the nets and anxious to bat until someone took his wicket. They want to believe that toil alone can produce that straight drive and a bat so broad that periodically it is measured. But it was not like that. From the start the lad had an uncanny way of executing his strokes perfectly. His boyhood coaches insist that their role was to ensure that he remained unspoilt. Sensing that he knew the game inside out, they were wise enough to leave him to his own devices, let him work it out for himself. There was no apprenticeship. Tendulkar was born to bat. Over the decades it has been Tendulkar's rare combination of mastery and boldness that has delighted connoisseurs and crowds alike. More than any other batsman, even Brian Lara, Tendulkar's batting has provoked gasps of admiration. A single withering drive dispatched along the ground eluding the bowler, placed unerringly between fieldsmen, could provoke wonder even among the oldest hands. A solitary square cut was enough to make a spectator's day. Tendulkar might lose his wicket cheaply but he is incapable of playing an ugly stroke. His defence might have been designed by Christopher Wren. And alongside these muscular orthodoxies could be found ornate flicks through the on-side, glides off his bulky pads that sent tight deliveries dashing on unexpected journeys into the back and beyond. Viv Richards could terrorise an attack with pitiless brutality, Lara could dissect bowlers with surgical and magical strokes, Tendulkar can take an attack apart with towering simplicity. Nor has Tendulkar ever stooped to dullness or cynicism. Throughout his wits have remained sharp and originality has been given its due. He has, too, been remarkably constant. In those early appearances, he relished the little improvisations calculated to send bowlers to the madhouse, cheeky strokes that told of ability and nerve. For a time thereafter he put them into the cupboard, not because respectability beckoned or responsibility weighed him down but because they were not required. Shot selection, his very sense of the game, counts among his strengths. On his most recent trip to Australia, though, he decided to restore audacity, cheekily undercutting lifters, directing the ball between fieldsmen, shots the bowlers regarded as beyond the pale. Even in middle age he remains unbroken. And yet, even this, the runs, the majesty, the thrill, does not capture his achievement. Reflect upon his circumstances and then marvel at his longevity. Here is a man obliged to put on disguises so that he can move around the streets, a fellow able to drive his cars only in the dead of night for fear or creating a commotion, a father forced to take his family holidays in Iceland because he might escape recognition in those parts, a person whose entire adult life has been lived in the eye of a storm. Throughout he has been public property, India's proudest possession, a young man and yet also a source of joy for millions, a sportsman and yet, too, an expression of a vast and ever-changing nation. Somehow he has managed to keep the world in its rightful place. Somehow he has raised children who relish his company and tease him about his batting. Whenever he loses his wicket in the 90s, a not uncommon occurrence, his oldest asks why he does not ''hit a sixer''. Somehow he has emerged with an almost untarnished reputation. Inevitably mistakes have been made. Something about a car, something else about a cricket ball and suggestions that he had stretched the facts to assist his pal Harbhajan Singh. But then he is no secular saint. It's enough that he is expected to bat better than anyone else. It's hardly fair to ask him to match Mother Teresa as well. At times India has sprung too quickly to his defence, as if a point made against him was an insult to the nation, as if he was beyond censure. A poor LBW decision against him - and he has had his allotment - can all too easily be turned into a cause celebre. Happily, Tendulkar has always retained his equanimity. He is a sportsman as well as a cricketer. By no means has it been the least of his contributions and it explains his standing in the game. And there has been another quality that has sustained him, a trait whose importance cannot be overstated. Not long ago Keith Richards was asked how the Rolling Stones had spent so many decades on the road, made so many records, put up with so much attention. His reply was as simple as it as telling. ''We love it, we just love playing,'' he explained. And so it has always has been with Tendulkar. It's never been hard for him to play cricket. The hard part will be stopping. But he will take into retirement a mighty record and the knowledge that he has given enormous pleasure to followers of the game.

[ESPN]

"Sachin greatest in the modern era" Sri Lankan skipper Kumar Sangakkara heaped praises on Sachin Tendulkar, who would complete 20 years in international cricket on November 15. Sangakkara, who arrived with his Lankan teamamtes in India on Sunday called the Indian the "greatest player of the modern era". "He (Tendulkar) has been brilliant. To have survived the tough test of public expectation in India is something, which should be commended. The runs (he has scored) are an added bonus. He's probably the greatest player to play the game in the modern era and compares with the (Donald) Bradmans and all the legends of the past," Sangakkara said. "We run out of superlatives when talking about Sachin. He keeps getting better and better. Being that consistent under such pressure (from fans), especially at home is a wonderful thing," the Lankan captain and one-down batsman gushed. Asked about any game plan his team had in the upcoming three-Test rubber to contain the master batsman, Sangakkara gave a wry smile and said there can be plans and plans which may not work against Tendulkar who made his Test debut against Pakistan at Karachi on November 15, 1989. "A lot of people have game plan (for Tendulkar). We have to see what works. When a batsman is scoring runs and doing the way Sachin is doing he will be a threat to any team. It's nothing new. I have been answering this question over the years (whether he would be a threat). The answer is always yes," he said. "It's a great option to have three spinners with someone like Angelo Mathews who is bowling so well. He gives us that flexibility as a frontline fast bowler and batsman. It frees us one spot if the wicket shows us that three spinners are a possibility," Sangakkara said. However, he added, that on a regular basis his team went in with three fast bowlers and two spin bowlers. "Most often we like to play three fast bowlers and two spinners. The Angelo Mathews factor gives us the edge of having a proper all-rounder in the side," he explained. Sangakkara maintained that there was no mystery left in world cricket with the video analysis that's available today. "Words like mystery are exaggerated. You are a mystery only in your first series with the sort of video analysis available. You have to work harder later on," he said. Lankan mystery bowler Ajantha Mendis had troubled most of the top Indian batsmen when the last series between the two outfits was held in the Emerald Island. Sangakkara praised left-arm spinner Rangana Herath for the progress he has made recently, especially in the series at home against New Zealand and Pakistan where he outshone not only Mendis but also world record-setting wicket-taker Muttiah Muralitharan. "Herath is a great player. He's a positive guy who tries his heart out. Such a good spinner had to play third fiddle to Murali and Mendis which has made him hungrier. Against New Zealand and Pakistan he out-bowled Murali and Mendis by a long way. He's a very important player and we hope he can replicate that performance," the Lanka captain said. Sangakkara said his team had two wicket-keeping options in number one Prasanna Jayawardene and Kaushal Silva and hoped his squad would settle down very soon ahead of the first Test in Ahmedabad commencing on November 16. "Kaushal Silva, who is understudy to Prasanna Jayawardene, has scored a huge amount of runs in domestic cricket. He gives us an extra option. But we have to settle down very soon into a winning combination before the Ahmedabad Test," he said. The Lankans are to open the tour with a three-day side game against the Board President"s XI at the MCA's Recreation Centre in the Bandra-Kurla Complex from November 11. They are scheduled to play the second and third Tests at Kanpur and Mumbai before clashing with the hosts in two T20 Internationals and a best-of-five ODI series.

[DomainK]

That's huge coming from a guy who hardly ever praises anyone from the opposition.

[bharat297]

To me at the moment, Sachin and Lara stand alone as the best batsmen (considering both forms of the game) that I have seen (which means 80s onwards). Ponting comes in third but given he still has a few years we never know but Sachin and Lara stand atop in my opinion.

[lonestarranger]

The Master Moments By Dileep Premachandran Itzhak Perlman, the violin virtuoso who took his first bow at Carnegie Hall as an 18-year-old, once said: “For every child prodigy that you know about, at least 50 potential ones have burned out before you even heard about them.” After Sachin Tendulkar’s first Test match in Karachi 20 years ago produced just 15 runs and five wicketless overs for 25, hardened cynics might have questioned the wisdom of thrusting a 16-year-old on to such a stage. A week later, in Faisalabad, there was nowhere to hide. When Tendulkar arrived at the crease to join his Mumbai teammate, Sanjay Manjrekar, India were in disarray at 101 for 4. In a column many years later, Wasim Akram wrote: “It was a lush green wicket, possibly the greenest I’ve seen in Pakistan, and Tendulkar was batting on 20-odd when a ball from me hit him. I immediately asked him if he was alright and he looked me in the eye and nodded. I was a 21-year-old then, so I did not give the matter much thought, but in retrospect that score of 50-odd was the first hint the world got about Tendulkar’s special talent.” For the world, it was a hint. For the boy himself, it was so much more. “My first innings was a disaster,” he said. “When I walked out at Faisalabad, I told myself that I would do my best to just stay at the wicket, even if I didn’t score runs.” He finished with 59, having stayed at the crease for a shade over 4 hours. And although it didn’t win the Test, or set the pulse racing, it meant a lot to someone thrown in at the deep end. “I said to myself, ‘You can handle this, it’s not a place where you don’t belong.’” In one of its special issues, Time magazine had Tendulkar’s debut at No. 4 in its list of Top 10 Sporting Moments, behind Michael Jordan’s The Shot (against the Cleveland Cavaliers), Pete “Charlie Hustle” Rose being banned from baseball and Arsenal winning the English league title in the last minute of the 1988-89 season. In the years to come, you can take it for granted that thousands will claim that they were at the National Stadium on 15 November when he walked out in an India cap for the first time. In retrospect, it was certainly an I-was-there moment, though few could have imagined that Tendulkar would still be punching the ball through the covers two decades later. Perhaps we in India can’t really fathom the full extent of the adoration and expectation that he has had to deal with in that time. Matthew Hayden, another batting colossus of our age, gave voice to what many outsiders feel when he wrote: “His life seems to be a stillness in a frantic world and I admire his mental strength. When Tendulkar goes out to bat, it’s beyond chaos—it is a frantic appeal by a nation to one man.” Some, like Muhammad Ali, protected themselves with a veneer of loudmouthed arrogance. Others, like George Best, lost themselves in a haze of boozy, womanizing nights. With Tendulkar, the humility, the feeling that he considered himself truly fortunate to be doing what he did, never went away, even if it cost him any semblance of a normal life. “I could say that I didn’t get to do all those things that a normal teenager would do,” he told me once, “but then again, not many people get the opportunity to do what I do.” That awareness of the big picture was best illustrated in Steve Waugh’s final Test at SCG (Sydney Cricket Ground) in January 2004. Twenty minutes before stumps, with Australia seemingly safe, Waugh—who had scripted a typically defiant 80 just when his team most needed it—swept a delivery from Anil Kumble to deep square leg, where Tendulkar wrapped his hands around it. As 40,000 Australians rose in unison, it took Tendulkar a moment to comprehend the significance of the occasion. “Honestly, I wasn’t thinking that I had a hand in Steve Waugh’s last dismissal,” he said later. “I was thinking of how we could pull off the win. But once I realized that it was his last innings, I ran all the way from the boundary to congratulate him. I said, ‘You’ve made every Australian proud, and every cricketer admires you’. That was about it really, nothing more.” Just as Sunil Gavaskar was defined by his heroics against the all-conquering West Indies, so Tendulkar remains peerless because of the enormity of his achievements against Australia. Numbers matter in sport, but nothing counts quite as much as how you do against the best. With 10 Test centuries and eight one-day hundreds against the dominant team of his era, Tendulkar’s place in the pantheon is beyond dispute. More than cold statistics though, it’s the moments that will endure long after he’s put his bat away for the last time. That final over in the Hero Cup semi-final. The audacious assault on Shane Warne in Chennai. The cold-eyed targeting of Shoaib Akhtar at Centurion, South Africa, in 2003. That match-winning century in Chennai, just a fortnight after the streets in the vicinity of his restaurant in Mumbai had resembled war-torn Beirut. And most of all, Perth in February 1992. That magical 114 on a lightning-fast pitch, even as the team was routed by 300 runs. Watching the teenager stand on tiptoe and cut and drive with the panache of an old pro in baggy green, Merv Hughes, he of the walrus moustache and the colourful sledges, turned to Allan Border and said, “This little ***** is going to get more runs than you, AB.” He was right. Source: Livemint article Hughes : “This little ***** is going to get more runs than you, AB.” Rightly said. :D

[rkt.india]

Oh come on.."how could his mates not get inspired?" This is pushing it...did Ravi even watch how dhoni was dismissed? there is no effing thing u can do when a fielder pulls of a catch like that!! Bottom line is Tendulkar hadn't done much the whole series..and he did that (and much much more i might add) in the last game. But it must also be said that the reason why we are alive in this series to day is because of Dhoni - Gambhir partnership(2nd ODI) and Dhoni - Yuvraj partnership (3rd ODI). Imagine how Dhoni and especially Gambhir might feel on reading such articles?..come to think of it the thread titled "welcome to the 90's..India is a one man team again" is pretty insulting as well. Don't you guys remember the game against pak in ICC CT..Gambhir was the only guy that lay claim to having shown some spine. Even in the first ODI of this series I think it was GG who was there like a fort amid ruin all around him until Bhajji and Prav came out with that cameo. Praise Sachin..for praise he no doubt deserves for having played that innings. But its not right to criticize other players(successful ones at that) just because they didn't succeed in the matches in which he did. Afterall we hardly blame Sachin when he doesn't do much and one of the other guys like Gambhir, Dhoni etc win the game or make sure they save us some grace by getting near the target, do we? So its like speaking with a forked tongue to say things like "we are back in the nineties.." etc..because if we were the scoreline wouldn't be 3-2 it would be 5-0 by now.

Absolutely right Sir

[newmanthepunter]

Recently came accross this comment on NDTV website... 20:45 IST, Sunday, November 08, 2009 Reply by: Umar farook Sachin your are a best Doctor in the world, u can do wonderful operations, but patient will not survive, and you will be responsible for patients death.Still now , u did not learn how to play anchor role, scored more than 17k runs but does not know how to play when 19 needed in 18 balls u made a silly mistake which gave the way to India's defeat that match and series.In the same manner we lost chennai test by 12 runs against Pakistan because of you. Just watch Javed Miandad's old videos of Australasia cup final and 92 World cup semi final. :hysterical: