Post of week # 4: Please Vote

[Zap_Brannigan]

My Two cents wins again!!3rd time in 4 weeks!! His thread "Five ways to show that Sachin is not that Great" gets the honor. Enjoy another 10 million ICF$!! You know what to do. Vote now or forever be damned in hell !! 1.

Five ways to show that Sachin is not that Great

You have made a career out of researching ways to get at Sachin. You spend countless hours late at night trying to find the one chink in his armor, you waste days of your life on Cricinfo’s stats page and finally you think you have nailed it. You have the perfect material to take Sachin and his fans down a notch or two. And then what happens? You run into someone like BossBhai who within two minutes tears you to shred and ruins all the effort you have put into your ‘research’. Well, you are using the wrong approach. Why settle for facts and figures when you can be more successful with obscurity and rants? Why don’t you leave all the researching to proven experts in the field who have already tasted some form of success? Here are 5 tips from experts on the right approach 1) Keep changing goal posts Don’t let the debater corner you into debating one statement or aspect of discussion. That’s when all the true facts will emerge and you will have to beat a hasty retreat onto another, more gullible forum. So if the discussion started using Sachin’s average, change it to strike rate as soon as possible. By the time the debater types an answer to that, change it to his getting out in the 90s. Also, when comparing other players with Sachin, it’s always good to find out what the other players strength are, rather than Sachin’s weakness. For example, Ponting is a good 3 inches taller than Sachin. Why not use that fact to make Sachin look smaller? Like, “Ponting is the best batsmen among all those who are over 5 ft 7 inches in height, can Sachin ever achieve this?†2) Always talk about team goals while comparing him to players from other team You have learnt in your basic math’s and science class that, while comparing two things, all other factors must be equal. Usain Bolt is the fastest man on earth but if you make him run with 3 handicapped players in a relay race, he is bound to lose and hence it’s not fair to compare him with Tyson gay based on team strengths. But don’t let this fact come in your way while discussing Sachin. You can show that Sachin is a much inferior batsman than Miandad as the later has featured in more world cup and test wins! 3) Question his motive for scoring runs Sachin’s strength is that he scores tons of runs. Why not turn the enemy’s strength into his weakness? Why does he score so many runs? Ignore the fact that any run scored by him would add to the team’s tally. He must score those for his own gain. In fact he has a separate database in his computer which he updates everyday with his score. Why does he score so many centuries? Because he cares only for personal records unlike other batsmen like Afridi who make sure they are never in a danger of doing so even accidently 4) Rake up his captaincy issue You are discussing his batting. The opponent is gaining an upper hand. Bang, you pull up his captaincy stats. He sucked as a captain and therefore he cannot be great. Since he is not great, his batting cannot be great either. 5) Finally, use the ‘He is a choker’ argument This is the holy grail of anti-Sachins. This is their ‘Chewbacca’ defense. The opponents state that Sachin has the maximum runs, you say, “But he is a choker!â€They say that he has led us to more victories than others have played matches, you say “But he chokes when it mattersâ€. They say that he has won us more finals than anyone; you say “He choked in the world cup 2003 finalsâ€. They say that he is the best, you counter with “Best at chokingâ€. The opponents say that they are tired of arguing and want to go home now; you say “But Sachin is a chokerâ€. Keep in mind that this one statement is enough. The onus is not on you to provide stats, or to even be on topic. You can add lots of smileys along with your post and then watch the opponents trying to drag up stats and write paragraph stating that he is not. Then you end it all with, “no matter what anyone says, he is still a chokerâ€. Check-mate

2.My two Cent's reply to Ultimate_game ,

@My two cents, Great points and I have been one of the biggest Sachin fans throughout but I have to say that point no. 5 does have some merit. Over the years what I've realized is that whenever there's a tight situation or a close game in an important tourney Sachin generally doesn't get the job done. He is great at scoring runs in the series but he's not a "clutch hitter" if I could use baseball parlance. Sachin takes you agonizingly close but usually someone has to be around to finish the job and that to me is the only mark against SRT. E.g., chennai 99 against Pak, or even World cup 2003 game against Pak - Sachin scored 98 but he got out with around 100 to get and it was Yuvraj and Dravid who had to clean up. As most of the experts say, never leave the job to the next batsman and Sachin fails in that respect. I won't hold World cup 2003 final against him as it was our bowlers who bottled it and not Sachin. After all it's unrealistic to expect a team to chase 360 in a world cup final against the likes of McGrath & Lee and that too against an Aussie fielding side. Let me ask you a hypothetical question - Let's say India is playing Pakistan in World cup final in 2011 and is chasing 280. The Indian scorecard reads 201/5 in 38 overs. If you could pick two batsmen to be out there in the middle whom would you pick? I will go with Dhoni & Yuvraj, or even Dhoni & Raina. I have seen Dhoni & Yuvraj finish countless games and they may not be as talented as Sachin but when it comes to the crunch they usually deliver. After watching Sachin so many years in a similar situation Sachin would get out when the score is around 230 with the other batsman expected to finish the job with the tail. Similarly in a test match, India needs around 100 to get to win the match with 5 or 6 wickets down with one specialist batsman at the crease. Whom would you have? I will go with either Laxman, Dravid, Gambhir, Sehwag in the order stated. With Sachin at the crease I can see a 20 run loss when he gets out with 30 to get followed quickly by the tail. Sachin is a great batsman and has proven it over the years and will walk into my World XI team for tests and odis everytime but it will be due to his consistnt scoring and not for delivering in clutch situations. Every human has a shortcoming and for Sachin it's inconsistency to deliver at the crunch.

I dont agree with you. Since most of your examples consist of ODIs,Can you tell me, in ODIs, right from the time the game started, how many times has an opener remain unbeaten and guided his team to victory? An opener, not a no 3 or or a no4. Only a handful of times. If an opener stays till 50 overs he is bound to score more than 150 each time and thats not even possible. Dhoni and Raina are finsihers and its enough for them to score 50+ to be unbeaten at the end but Sachin will have to score 120+ to do the same. How is that a fair comparison? Also since, Sachin rarely gets to play in the last 10 overs, most of his experience lies in opening. How then can you expect an inexpected finisher to finish perfectly? he must be the only opener in the wolrd who is expected to finish matches for his team! As for test matches, BossBhai, can you do a stat on out of all the batsmen mentioned by UG, how many have guided the team to victory in 4th innings in how many games being not out and compare the number with Sachin's if you have the time? UG, its the perception and expectations built around Sachin which causes the illusion. Its a common fallacy of the human mind to remember things wrongly. Sachin has reached such a status that its his failure in crunch situations which stand out in our mind as its an aberration from his consistancy. We wont even remember his success in crunch situation, partly because we expected it, and partly because when he is batting we dont think its a crunch situation For others, who are inconsistant, its their once in a blue moon success in crunch situation which stands out. For example, UV is remembered for his natwest innings. So in our mind, he becomes a great presssure player! His thousand failures wont be remembered. With Sachin, its his failures that are so uncommon that we try to attach special significance to the match situation where he failed (even if there was none, he might have been in the same situation a 100 times and succeeded before) and conclude it must be a crunch situation which he failed!

3.

I like Shoaib Akhtar for the following reasons: A: As an Asian/brown cricket bowler to be considered, feared as a true genuine fast bowler amongst west indians/oz/nz/eng/vuvuzella players is an achievement by itself B: Used to enjoy his bowling when he was in form/ enjoyed his stint with KKR in IPL that opening game where he took 4 wickets was simply amazing C: Probably one of the very few players in Pakistani team who can speak english well and is educated and does not include religious salutations in every sentence/ not overtly religious like 99% of Paki players D: Usually paki fans never hate on their players even if they are involved in crimes ie: Bob woolmer's murder, kickbacks, spot fixing, ball biting, match fixing, sharjah but when it comes to Shoaib Akhtar they profess their outlandish hatred on him for some reason or other which makes me doubt their intentions and reasons for hating him thus making me want to support Akhtar even more. Think of 'enemy of my enemy is my friend' E: He doesn't wear homosexual green lipstick or green football shoes matching his green outfit F: Props to him for sticking with PCB and not suing them to bankruptcy oblivion after they exposed his privacy to the press by declaring his sexual disease.....regardless of one's views on his private life....you don't publish that to the whole world...pretty a**holish and unprofessional G: At age 35 still bowling at 95 mph is simply amazing for someone with south asian body type and gene

4.

Do u guys even no how much guts it takes to come back from retirment' date=' hats of to afridi for taking this brave decision :hatsoff:[/quote']

[kabira]

where is the poll?

[Zap_Brannigan]

bump for a new day

[b555]

another one for MTC on the way

[gaurav92]

MTC's got a habit of this now.Its silly to even open a poll, just add another star to his tally if his post is there as a nomination, he is tremendous

[EnterTheVoid]

Nball for me.

[ZodiaC]

Voted for MTC :headshake: Any chance of selecting multiple nominees? Bhanu's one's right up there too :cantstop:

[CSK Fan]

Mods, where is my third star? :((

[Sir john]

Mods' date=' where is my third star? :(([/quote'] :hysterical::hysterical: