Test #169

[Zap_Brannigan]

Tomorrow when India take the field, Sachin will surpass Steve Waugh to become the most capped test player ever!! Interestingly enough, this is probably his best year ever!! :hatsoff: to the run machine!

[Precambrian]

WAG!

[SachDan]

The Greatest :hatsoff:

[Sachinism]

GOAT :adore:

[SachDan]

Expectations are god's gift, not burden: Tendulkar

Colombo: All set to become the most-capped Test player, Indian batting stalwart Sachin Tendulkar said the sky-high expectations of his cricket-mad nation are not a burden as he considers them a "god's gift". "It is not a burden. It is god's gift ... the passion which I had (to play cricket) I got to work on it for 20 years. I enjoy every moment. I don't think it as a burden. It was my desire in life that has happened," Tendulkar said. Tendulkar will play his 169th Test when he takes the field against Sri Lanka in the third game of a three-match series here tomorrow, surpassing the 168 played by former Australian captain Steve Waugh. The 37-year-old said touching the milestone is like a dream realised sooner than expected in his two-decade-old cricket career. "It has been a long journey. I still remember the first Test match that I played in Pakistan. The 1989 was completely different feeling altogether compared to the other form of cricket that I played," he told reporters. "I am very happy that I have had the privilege of having had such a long journey at international level and this was my dream. To play for India was my dream and getting to play 169 Test matches is fantastic. Really pleased with that. "The journey has gone by very quickly. Quicker than I expected. The time flies and you just need to enjoy it. It is a circle," he added. The champion batsman said he has had his rough times but has managed to cope with them by working hard. "Sometimes there are rough patches. But the simple formula that I have followed is that whenever I have gone through such phases, I have found the reason to work hard. "I have tried and spent all my energy at what I have been trying to get better at and trying to keep things simple. If you keep things simple they are simple to manage. "Cricket is simple but everything around it ... if you keep it simple then it becomes relatively easy. And then the huge support that whatever I have had over the years motivated me to go out and live upto expectations," he added. Tendulkar said he still prepares hard for matches and that has helped him evolve with the changing times. "I think the pre-match preparations are extremely important. I feel that I have always been prepared. Sometimes I have been able to achieve results and sometimes I have not but my preparations are always there. I am really proud of this," Tendulkar said. Asked which contemporary of his has it in him to break his records, Tendulkar said he hopes that player is an Indian. "All I can say is that whoever breaks my record should be an Indian," he said. Tendulkar said he is happy that the milestone has come after spending 20 years in international cricket. "To achieve this, you need x number of years, the x number of tours and that is when these things happen. I am quite pleased that it has taken 20 plus years to get here. It is wonderful," he said. "In the last few years, we have played a reasonable amount of Test cricket and it is good. I felt, in early 90s I hardly got any Test matches. There were a couple of occasions when there were two or three Test matches in a year which was a little disappointing. But that is not the case now," he said. Asked if he had any advice for the younger lot of players, Tendulkar said, "It is important to dream. The second thing is that you chase your dreams. Be sincere and honest and chase your dreams.. they do come true."

[siddhu]

Do they actually get a new cap every test or thats just an expression?

[Precambrian]

Lol, no they don't get new caps. Apparently Ponting sported his original baggy green for over a 100 tests till it became all tattered and had to replace it.

[siddhu]

Lol' date=' no they don't get new caps. Apparently Ponting sported his original baggy green for over a 100 tests till it became all tattered and had to replace it.[/quote'] I was aware of that.. but I thought maybe 'Ponting ne cap ki dukaan khol rakhi ho..':cantstop::cantstop::cantstop:

[Roshanrocks]

Tendulkar relishes the age of endurance When you feel you have read all possible kinds of articles on Tendulkar, another one appears, so different and refreshing.... From Sharda Ugra in cricinfo .. I am becoming a fan of this lady

It is a record Sachin Tendulkar was expected to break. Opening his innings at the tail-end of the last millennium, no one could spend two decades in the international game and not go past his other peers in terms of the number of Tests played. In their time, the cricketers whose names will now follow Tendulkar's on this list of iron men were once indefatigable: Steve Waugh, it seemed, would never melt and Allan Border looked like he would never crumble. Yet after them Tendulkar arrived. As he steps into the P Sara stadium on Tuesday morning, this blazing comet of a cricketer, who batted at a rhythm different from Border and Waugh, will become the last of their kind - the long-surviving Test titan. Stretch the imagination 22 years ahead and see if you can pick any fresh Test stripling of today - Umar Akmal, Eoin Morgan, Steven Smith, Adrian Barath - to go past 170 Tests. Other than Bradman's 99.94, Tendulkar now owns the marks that batsmen dream about: most runs and most centuries. If those were about skill, this one, 169 Tests, is about his hunger. More than anything else, it is what has taken him this far and what has given his career a mind-bender of a second wind after the gloom of 2006. The day before his 169th Test appearance, he described his sport much like Glenn McGrath did, calling it 'simple'. In an interview he had once talked about its more complex layers. "There is not a single boring day," he said, "when you don't learn anything new." Those could have been the words of a young man in his tenth Test but that was circa 2003. Tendulkar the cricketer has switched effortlessly between youth and maturity. When he turned 18 and was by then an 11-Test veteran, his city's signature tabloid Mid-Day put him on the cover of their Sunday magazine supplement, posing on Marine Drive, dressed in a shirt of riotous colour at the wheel of his first car, a Maruti 800. A taciturn teenager, far from the confident sage of the 21st century, he had these words of wisdom to offer on his coming of age. "When you are 18," he said, "you're not young anymore." When he had gone two series without a hundred, it was said that far too many allowances were being made for his age. In his third series and his ninth Test, three months after turning 17, he batted at No. 6 just ahead of Manoj Prabhakar and produced the first of his 48 centuries in Manchester. It was expected and it happened. This was the prodigy who fit into his India cap with ease, without open tantrum, controversy or angst. With 168 Tests, Tendulkar has grown up in public and so appears timeless but he is a different man from the cherub who couldn't hide under the helmet grille. Until the first crack of his bat made the annoucement of intent that is. The noise of the crowd lifted him but in the first half of his career, even when captain, Tendulkar lived with a peculiar strain of white line fever. The competitor on the field was a man of deep reserve when outside its boundaries. Even though he grew up in a slightly more mellow age - one in which his telephone number could be found by looking for his father's name in the Mumbai telephone directory - he lived with public expectation and dependence like no other teammate peer or contemporary. Still, whatever his inner debates about a youth lived in the open, his batting remained reliably resplendent. As he would himself say, there wasn't a day he wasn't learning, be it how to season a long innings with strokes that had until then belonged to his one-day repertoire or experimenting with what it meant to be anchor over aggressor. What defined him most sharply as the youngest of men in Indian cricket still remains as he becomes the game's oldest. Before the icon and the brand and the deification and the 37kg coffee table books comes the batsman. It is as if his mind has always been deliberate, undistracted and his heart, when stepping on the field, full with youthful optimism. He will prepare for his 169th Test just like he always has, in calculated, thoughtful steps. During nets on Monday, he would have inspected the P Sara wicket and calibrated all the information into method and shot selection. He described it once: "I look at the wicket and the opposition and analyse their strengths and weaknesses and then pick my shots. These are the shots that will bring me closer to 100 per cent success. You try and minimise your risks. But in spite of that you make mistakes." Then when back in his room, on his own, he will spend ten minutes on a visualisation, part of his pre-match preparation since he was a school boy. He will see the bowlers before him, the stationing of the field, the feel of the ground, the heat or the breeze, the noise of the crowd, "so when I actually go there in the middle it's the second time I'm going there, not the first". He may pick up the bat he has carried back with him to his hotel like he does every time and maybe shadow practice a little. Just before his 169th match, he will do all of this, part-drill, part-prayer, equal respect given to practice and providence. When he goes out on the field, with India creaking at their joints, Sachin Tendulkar will have with him a record that is a reminder not of champagne and glory but the ache of endurance. But he will walk lightly because, like always, he will be the young man of 16

[Roshanrocks]

my :canabis: for today

[sudheer kumar]

The Journey 169*.... What a moment to a cricketer to reach these records.... Only Sachin Tendulkar is able to get these records. It never happen in past...........It won't happen in future I think. But Still there is a debate about "Saching vs Lara........ Who is best?" The records are at Sachin's side. As an Indian I can say Sachin is the best ever cricketer in this world. I hope his Journey will continue to 200th test match. If he play 200th test match.........no more words to say about it. He is the only player to face challenging bowlers. 20 years past in his career.... but there is only thing sachin need.. It is ODI world cup. In 2003..we lost a good opportunity. I hope 2011 will be in favor of India. We should ask OCTOPUS PAUL about it. But Sachin should not be rested for ODIs. He need some practice before world cup. Practice should be match practice. At least he should play alternative ODI series which Team India will play in upcoming 6 months.

ALL THE BEST SACHIN TENDULKAR

[99.94]

I was watching The Back Page today (Australian sports show) and one of the blokes on the show (whose name I cannot for the life of me remember) actually has the cap that Sachin Tendulkar wore in his first ever test. Apparently he bought it many years ago for just 300 AUD. Pretty amazing story!

[Lord]

I was watching The Back Page today (Australian sports show) and one of the blokes on the show (whose name I cannot for the life of me remember) actually has the cap that Sachin Tendulkar wore in his first ever test. Apparently he bought it many years ago for just 300 AUD. Pretty amazing story!

was he an Indian?

[ucilite]

:hatsoff:

[sudheer kumar]

The Journey 169*.... What a moment to a cricketer to reach these records.... Only Sachin Tendulkar is able to get these records. It never happen in past...........It won't happen in future I think. But Still there is a debate about "Saching vs Lara........ Who is best?" The records are at Sachin's side. As an Indian I can say Sachin is the best ever cricketer in this world. I hope his Journey will continue to 200th test match. If he play 200th test match.........no more words to say about it. He is the only player to face challenging bowlers. 20 years past in his career.... but there is only thing sachin need.. It is ODI world cup. In 2003..we lost a good opportunity. I hope 2011 will be in favor of India. We should ask OCTOPUS PAUL about it. But Sachin should not be rested for ODIs. He need some practice before world cup. Practice should be match practice. At least he should play alternative ODI series which Team India will play in upcoming 6 months. ALL THE BEST SACHIN TENDULKAR

[littlemaster1982]

Sachin Tendulkar's all-round greatness means he will not be surpassed As the Indian icon plays in a historic 169th Test match, it should be remembered that he has excelled not just with the bat To understand what Sachin Tendulkar has meant to Indian cricket, it's necessary to look beyond his record-breaking 169th Test appearance, achieved yesterday in the series against Sri Lanka, and his batting heroics. Think instead of a man who has 198 wickets, 154 of them in one-day internationals, an individual who has never been less than fully involved out on the field despite having been around since the days when Mike Gatting was leading a rebel tour of South Africa. Think back to a World Series game in Australia in December 1991. The West Indies were waning as a limited-overs force, but when they skittled India for 126 in Perth, few gave Mohammad Azharuddin's side a chance of salvaging anything from the game. But West Indies then fell apart themselves and it was left to Curtly Ambrose and Anderson Cummins to get them within range. Ambrose was run out, and Cummins and Patrick Patterson then levelled the scores with Azhar having turned to Tendulkar's medium pace as a last resort. With the last ball of his only over, Tendulkar tempted Cummins to flash outside off stump. Azhar took a fine catch in the slips, and the game was tied. Two years later, the boy with the golden arm was at it again, [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Br6JnKpOWEE]this time in the Hero Cup semi-final against South Africa[/ame], a team who were coming into their own as a one-day powerhouse. Again it was Tendulkar that Azhar turned to, with six needed from the final over. He gave up just three, and went on to sneak one through Brian Lara's defence in a final where West Indies were routed. In Tests, Tendulkar's partnership-breaking ability came to the fore in matches where he didn't contribute as heavily with the bat. In India's most cherished victory of all, at Eden Gardens in 2001, he made 10 in both innings. But facing a race against the clock to bowl Australia out on the final afternoon, it was his intervention after tea that effectively killed off Steve Waugh's hopes of clinging on to a series lead. On a worn pitch and with the capacity crowd bellowing approval, he ripped the ball at near-right angles to supplement Harbhajan Singh's heroics at the other end. Adam Gilchrist, Matthew Hayden and Shane Warne all fell leg-before, unable to fathom the extent of turn as Tendulkar tossed up leg breaks, googlies and the odd quicker one. More than two years later, at Adelaide, he made 1 in the first innings of a game made memorable by the batting of Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman, and some rare Ajit Agarkar moments in the Test-match sun. With Australia setting India a target on a surface where chasing has never been easy, Tendulkar made his mark when it mattered most, with Australia 142 ahead and having seven wickets in hand. Damien Martyn and Steve Waugh were undone in successive overs, both by prodigious turn and edges to Dravid at slip. In Multan the following spring, he produced another Warne-like special to bowl Moin Khan through his legs to ruin Pakistan's hopes of saving the follow-on. India went on to win by an innings and 52 runs, and the dismissal buried some ghosts from the recent past. At Eden Gardens in 1999, Moin's gritty 70 had been pivotal as Pakistan recovered from 26 for six to win a Test match. His last Test wicket came at Wellington in April 2009, and you have to go back a further 18 months and a game against Pakistan in Guwahati for his last ODI wickets. A shoulder that required surgery has been keenly felt on Asian pitches, where his spin and ability to wobble the ball off the seam gave his captains an option well worth checking out. Mahendra Singh Dhoni, the current India captain, will console himself with the thought that the bowling decline has gone hand-in-hand with a batting resurgence. In seven Tests this year, Tendulkar averages more than 96, and has five centuries. Overall he is averaging 56.25 in Tests. Back when he started playing, 20 Test centuries and 10 more in the one-day arena marked you out as one of the all-time greats. The benchmarks he has gone on to set in both forms of the game make a mockery of everyone else who has played in this era. Consider this to put things into perspective – Andrew Flintoff is five years younger and his peak lasted six years, from the hundred against South Africa at Lord's in 2003 to the Ashes-winning encore of last summer. Tendulkar was scoring match-saving Test hundreds at Old Trafford when Flintoff was 12, and he'll play his sixth World Cup next spring, while Fred watches from the sidelines. As Sharda Ugra, who has seen Tendulkar progress from prodigy to old hand, asked in Cricinfo: "Stretch the imagination 22 years ahead and see if you can pick any fresh Test stripling of today – Umar Akmal, Eoin Morgan, Steve Smith, Adrian Barath – to go past 170 Tests." You can't, can you? Few records in sport are safe, not Bob Beamon's, not Hank Aaron's and not even Jack Nicklaus's of 18 majors. But Tendulkar, like Bradman and his 99.94, will endure. No one else will even get close.

[Guest BossBhai]

-- Removed on request of the user --

[The Outsider]

She forgets Cook ... the guy has quietly played 57 tests in just 4 yrs !! and is just 25 yrs old. At this rate the guy would have played close to 175 tests by the time he is 33 :omg: He has a lot going for him ... i.e The amount of Test Match cricket England play, Flat pitches and minimal or virtually very little ODI cricket and absolutely no Tontee-tontee ... Things going against him are that he is a opener and will very soon take over as captain which then makes it pretty darn hard to keep churning the runs consistently. But overall IMO he has a very good chance of getting close to Baasu ... atleast the aggregate Test runs. http://www.cricinfo.com/ci/content/player/11728.html

He might break the record for most tests, but certainly not of most runs. Even if we were to assume he carries on without any long break due to injury or form, he would need to play upwards of 200 test matches to go past Tendulkar (assuming Tendulkar ends with around 15000 runs) with his current scoring rate of 73 runs/test. AB de Villiers is another one who is going to end up playing a lot of test matches. He is only 26 and has played 61 tests. But he would also need to play more than 200 test matches to go past 15000 runs on his current average. Though it must be said he has improved a lot recently so might need less. Smith has a good shot though. He is not 30 yet and has played 86 tests and scored 7170 runs. If he can carry on playing beyond 38, he would come very close to Tendulkar if not beat the record. He has the advantage of being captain, so is unlikely to be dropped unless he encounters an absolutely horrific run of form.

[Guest BossBhai]

-- Removed on request of the user --

[Precambrian]

Cook is an Ashes away from oblivion. I wouldn't worry about him if I were the Boss.