Tendulkar and Zaheer retirement discussion [Poll added]

[Laaloo]

need to give him atleast another series but at no.5 or 6.people wrote him off in 2007 too but he made an epic comeback.if he does well in Aus series' date='fine,else retire/drop him n get Sehwag in the middle order[/quote'] What good will it do if he gets back into form? The damage has already been done and we haven't really given any chances to youngsters apart from Pujara and Kohli. Kohli still doesn't excite me and Pujara is still fairly new. If sachin plays, then that means Rahane will DEBUT in South Africa against Steyn and company. B->

[Pagalpanti]

If Gambhir and Sachin play vs Aus. That will be 2 down already even before we bat, they've been in woeful form, people are asking for Sachs retirement because no one expects him to go back to Ranji to sort out his problems at this age.

[Number]

Even if he avg 20 and guides youngsters it's good. Only on ICF people feel Sachin should go. NDTV polls were rigged by Sachin-haters. There is no problem with Sachin.

[Lord]

What good will it do if he gets back into form? The damage has already been done and we haven't really given any chances to youngsters apart from Pujara and Kohli. Kohli still doesn't excite me and Pujara is still fairly new. If sachin plays' date=' then that means Rahane will DEBUT in South Africa against Steyn and company. B->[/quote'] no drop Sehwag(who has been out of touch for longer) n play Rahane as opener in Aus series.if Sachin recovers form,it can be good for us in SA. anyway I dont agree with this grooming business,good players do well on debut on foreign pitches too. this'll be my line-up Gambhir Rahane Pujara Kohli Tiwary Sachin

[Laaloo]

Why would you not groom players? And what do you mean good players do well on debut? You expect Rahane to do very good against Steyn and Company? Everyone's been out of touch barring a few players. But Sachin is most likely candidate that should be replaced. Your lineup is for Aus series or for South Africa tour? Don't forget South africa tour is 7 months after the aus series; in between there's pointless series against the lankans, IPL, champions league, and other pointless T20 matches.

[Lord]

Why would you not groom players? And what do you mean good players do well on debut? You expect Rahane to do very good against Steyn and Company? Everyone's been out of touch barring a few players. But Sachin is most likely candidate that should be replaced. Your lineup is for Aus series or for South Africa tour? Don't forget South africa tour is 7 months after the aus series; in between there's pointless series against the lankans, IPL, champions league, and other pointless T20 matches.

Aus series. I meant that good players adapt n do well anyway.like Dravid,Ganguly,Clarke etc.anyway playing on flat pitches in India wont groom them for SA yeah Sachin shouldnt play ODIs.n the youngsters should go on A tour to SA. Sehwag,Gauti has been out of touch for longer,one of them needs to be dropped to sort out thier issues. yeah Sachin has been out of touch,but hes experienced n is far better than having Raina/Jaddu/UV at 6.he needs to play FC now n sort out his technical issues.the hunger I'm sure is there as we saw in Kolkata where he made an ugly 76.if he rediscovers form,he can be crucial in SA.we cant play a rookie side there.

[NareshK]

In the last year, he scored one fifty which was in the Kolkata test. When has Sachin failed so miserably and looked so out of sorts in his career ? He may have had a lean patch but he never looked so clueless like he did this past year. Whenever he bats now, it feels like a matter of time before he gets out.

[yoda]

:facepalm:

[SLICKR392]

If Gambhir and Sachin play vs Aus. That will be 2 down already even before we bat, they've been in woeful form, people are asking for Sachs retirement because no one expects him to go back to Ranji to sort out his problems at this age.

What about the 1st innings of the Ahmadabad match? We were 224-2 and he comes in and makes it 250-3. The pressure's on Kohli not Sachin.

[Yoda-esque]

2 days into the aftermath and no retirement.. OMG..He is going to continue :hysterical:

[Laaloo]

2 days into the aftermath and no retirement.. OMG..He is going to continue :hysterical:

tu apne sasural ke ghar ja :bye:

[Yoda-esque]

tu apne sasural ke ghar ja :bye:

Iska matlab kya hai???

[Laaloo]

Iska matlab kya hai???

I read in another thread about you mentioning something about your father in law

[Yoda-esque]

I read in another thread about you mentioning something about your father in law

oh:giggle:

[Tiger80]

I log into icf everyday hoping for sachin to do the right thing for india' date='i have no idea what he is hoping to accomplish.[/quote'] May be its time for you declare retirement from ICF :cantstop:

[rkt.india]

Should Tendulkar stay or go? The tough call may be the kindest

Conventions are always changing to fit the times. Amateur batsmen used (mostly) to walk. Professionals now wait for the umpire to decide. But the old arrangement was a kind of deal, the batsman saying to the umpire: "I'll help you out by walking if I nick it, but in return you've got to trust me if I say didn't." The new arrangement, properly understood, is also a trade-off: "I'm not walking, so you have to make the call, but in return I'll respect the decision you make". The transition, obviously, is from an amateur world based on personal trust to a professional set-up based on everyone being allowed to do the job they're paid to do. Few people in professional sport challenge that direction of traffic - from subjectivity to objectivity, from trust to professionalism, from winks and nudges to accountability and transparency. Except when it comes to the retirements of senior players. In this area, modern sport goes all weak and wobbly, prone to fits of extravagant sentimentality. We hear the usual phrases over and over: "He'll know when the time is right he's got to be able to make the decision himself when he's ready after so many years of service, it's only fair he gets to choose his home town would be a fitting finale? Really? Since when did the player know better than the selector who is selecting him? Since when is a batsman or bowler the best judge the trajectory of his own ability? It sounds like a highly amateurish set-up for such professional times. And why should a team organise its selection to provide "closure" for one player in the form of a ticker-tape send-off in his home town? By that logic, it is time to send home all the statistical analysts who try to provide coaches with what gamblers call "the edge" in selection. If the modern way is just to ask the star players what suits them best, sports teams could save themselves a fortune by abolishing support staff. I offer no view on whether Sachin Tendulkar should play on in Test cricket. I'm not in a position to assess his hunger or his private demeanour. But I do challenge what seems to be the general view, that the decision should be his and his alone. If they aren't there to pick the team, why bother having selectors? Delegating selection to the dressing room seems a retrograde step, to say the least. Expecting great players to deselect themselves is as irrational as expecting modern players to give themselves out lbw. I acknowledge entirely that the Tendulkar question is a very difficult decision for any selection panel. First, players of that quality do not follow conventional logic. The greatest players have a different kind of self-belief. In their own minds there is always a way to win, another chapter to write. Roger Federer has been urged to retire for years. But this season, aged 31, he spent another spell as world No. 1 and added a 17th grand slam title. There is honour in carrying on playing at a high level when you are no longer the dominant force in the sport. Secondly, Tendulkar is, well, Tendulkar. The numbers - 51 Test hundreds, 49 ODI hundreds, 34,000 international runs - are the least of it. Tendulkar will always add up to more than the sum of his aggregates. They do not capture his style and majesty with the bat, nor his dignity and aura. I've heard many people talk about watching Don Bradman, and spoken to a few who played on the same pitch. With luck, one day I will try to describe to future generations what it is like living in the age of Tendulkar. As boy and man, Tendulkar has made India feel proud. His achievements far transcend the sports field. Tendulkar has embodied the aspirations and achievements of a resurgent India There are so many highlights, it's hard to know where to begin. I will mention just two special moments, taken from almost the start and almost the finish of his career - bookends, if you like. First, think back to Tendulkar's reaction after scoring his maiden Test hundred, at Old Trafford in England in 1990. The 17-year-old prodigy brought up his century with a trademark straight drive for four off Angus Fraser. A normal 17-year-old would have jumped around ecstatically: "Look at me, I've done it, I'm only 17!" Tendulkar did nothing of the kind. He raised his bat quietly to thank the crowd, before looking down bashfully at the ground. There was, in his muted body language, a hint of a man accepting his lot in life. There was acceptance as well as happiness. He knew he was special. But special lives are rarely easy. He knew he was blessed with a rare talent, but that gift came with deep responsibilities. Greatness always exacts a price. For all the intrusions into his private life, for all the pressure heaped on him, Tendulkar has always tried to do justice to his gifts, to honour his responsibilities. It cannot have been easy. That is why my second Tendulkar memory does not, for once, feature a great innings by the little master. When India won the World Cup final in Mumbai in 2011, Indian players queued up to thank Tendulkar - even though he had failed with the bat. "He's carried the hopes of our nation for more than two decades," Virat Kohli explained as he held Tendulkar aloft, "now it's time we carried him on our shoulders." It was a perceptive remark, on many levels. As boy and man, Tendulkar has made India feel proud. His achievements far transcend the sports field. Tendulkar's career coincides almost exactly with the Indian economic revolution that began in 1991 with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's liberalisation reforms. Tendulkar has embodied the aspirations and achievements of a resurgent India. India, the nation as well as the cricket team, certainly owes Tendulkar a great debt of thanks. But it will not serve its hero by refusing to make a pragmatic decision. The moment should never arrive when Tendulkar takes the field for India without being one of the best 11 players. It would be beneath him. Sometimes the hard decision is actually the kindest.

http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/597665.html

[Sean Bradley]

Oh no not again :facepalm:, no more tendulkar retirement threads please !

[shortbread]

Maybe he's protecting a berth for Arjun Tendulkar, could be a sarkaari procedure, son gets the job if father passes away while in service!!

[Crookbond]

It's not just Tendulkar's decision http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/597889.html

I can think of few more thrilling things than to see an artist at the peak of his or her powers, where every situation is but a stage to perform on, every obstacle an opportunity to vanquish. Roger Federer has seen it and Lionel Messi is experiencing it now. Sport dramatises skill but you see the impact of peak performance everywhere. Lata Mangeshkar hit every note that music composers could conceive of, some surgeons find ways of reaching tumours others may not know of, architects see beauty in a barren landscape. With time, you can take skill for granted, maybe even ignore the factors that allowed your skill to dazzle. Inevitably you will know what to do when the next challenge surfaces, but that confluence of factors may have disappeared. The mind may be willing but the lungs might be weaker, the fingers shaky, the eyes not quite what they were. But the mind of a champion refuses to see those as indicators of weakness and fights on because that is what it's best at. Players become champions because their response to adversity is always to fight, to seek to vanquish, to look it in the eye and say, "You think I can't?" You and I may not always understand that, because at some point we might have accepted limitations, might have bowed to the situation. But champions don't. They are not only gifted but are aware of their gifts - there's a fundamental difference - and use them as weapons to win battles. To overcome, to defeat, these are intoxicants that champions live on. There is an apparent limitlessness to their ability, an audacity to their thinking. That is what allowed Sachin Tendulkar to even contemplate not driving a single ball through the off side in Sydney in 2004. It was the audacity of the thought and his belief in his ability that allowed him to carve out a double-century. It is the limitlessness of ability that sees a gap over a fielder where others would have hoped to hit between two men. It was Tendulkar's faith in himself that helped him rebound from 2007-08 to have the two best years of his career, in his late thirties. Why, in the final of the IPL in 2010, when he shouldn't have been holding a bat, he conjured up a fifty. And so my thesis is that the very mindset that drives champions to heights that others feel are unattainable prevents them from accepting that the time has come. The peerless Mangeshkar continued to sing when her voice had begun to disobey her. She had the belief but not the tools to convert that belief into another great melody. So too with Ricky Ponting, with Ian Botham, with Kapil Dev. And that is where Tendulkar is today. Possessed of an extraordinary mind, sublime skill and a very rare humility towards his sport, he has inhabited planets that we hadn't imagined, let alone seen from a distance. Thirty-four Test hundreds we thought would not be attained again; he has crossed that by 50%. He has almost twice the number of international centuries as the next best, and the 34,000 runs he has made in international cricket is the equivalent of scientists in the fifties thinking you could land on Mars. This audacity, this refusal to accept what everyone else thought were limits to accomplishment, is what made him the player of his generation. He is still possessed of this audacity. It defines him. To say "I cannot anymore" would be an acceptance of defeat almost. In him there will be a voice and a spirit that says: "I've done it before, I can do it again". That is why people who say the decision to retire must be his and his alone, and that he will know when the time comes, are wrong. If Monty Panesar spins one past him, that cannot be the last moment of the contest. It must end with a cracking cover drive. There is one other reason why so many sportspersons get the timing of their exit wrong. The faculties that make them unique start waning at 35 - in some sports much earlier. All their lives they have worked on that one skill; very few are good at anything else. But their peers, who were struggling with rejection and uncertainty at a time when the sportspersons were at the height of their powers, are just entering the best phase of their life. A lawyer, a corporate executive, a surgeon, an architect, they are all looking ahead at 35 or 40. That is our peak, our brightest phase. Can we even understand giving up what we have at 35? Accepting that everything else in life will now be second-best, maybe not even good at all? The phase that Tendulkar is in is a difficult phase, and often one of denial. That is why someone else has to take that decision for him; not an autocratic one but one borne out of consultation. And Tendulkar needs the people closest to him to not be intimidated by him, to not keep quiet out of respect or fear but to use the strength of that friendship to talk to him. Now more than ever, Tendulkar cannot be lonely. The moment when the selectors should talk to him is here. There may be another peak but it cannot be as large or as significant as those he has tamed. He cannot stumble on the path that lesser people are sprinting along on. His place in the cricket world, till such time as there is a world, is unchallenged. But can a champion let go?

[Old guy]

merge? :woot: :woot: