Tag Archives: One Day International

Tendulkar to review cricket future in November

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Sachin Tendulkar has for the first time admitted that at 39 he may not have much cricket left in him and will reassess his cricketing future next month.

Tendulkar’s retirement has been a topic of debate for quite some time now and the batting great said though he does not have any immediate plans, the thought of retirement has been on his mind.

He said that taking a decision on retirement after playing the game for close to 23 years will be a “hard one” and he will go by what his heart says.

“The moment of retirement is going to be hard because I haven’t experienced anything close to what I might go through when I retire. It depends on what my heart tells me then. I need not take a call right now. When I play in November, I will reassess things,” he said.

“I am 39 and I don’t think I have plenty of cricket left in me. But it depends on my frame of mind and my physical ability to deliver. When I feel that I am not delivering what is needed, and then I will re-look at the scheme of things. I am already 39 and no one expects me to go on playing forever,” Tendulkar told ‘Times NOW’.

India play a four-match home Test series against England starting on November 15 in Ahmedabad.

Tendulkar, who holds almost all the records in world cricket after playing 190 Tests and 463 ODIs, said that it would be a tough call for him to hang his bat and he will go by what his heart says.

“I don’t know. It is going to be hard because I haven’t experienced anything close to what I might go through when I retire. I cannot relate this moment with any other moment in my life. It will be a tough call. I will go with what my heart says,” said Tendulkar, who has scored 15,533 in Tests and 18,426 runs in ODIs.

The Little Master’s cricketing exit is a touchy issue. It took three deliveries and the cricketing world was buzzing with news and views on Sachin Tendulkar’s retirement. Click further to read what cricketing legends have said about the ‘retirement’ issue.

The Curious Case of Sachin and the Century

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The relationship between Sachin Tendulkar and his international centuries is very strange. His century has won matches for India but they have also been scored in lost and drawn/tied encounters. That proves that Sachin may be the greatest batsman to play cricket, but he is a mere human being, not God as envisioned by his followers. In fact, he himself told the media after the loss against Bangladesh that he doesn’t think of himself as a God! He may have scored his 100th century at Mirpur but it ended in a losing battle, where Bangladesh emerged victorious due to three half centuries, and a couple of quick-scored 40s.

  But before we move ahead, lets talk about the breakup of his centuries. Out of his 100 100s, Tendulkar has scored 20 against Australia, with 11 coming in Tests and 9 in one-dayers. Sri Lanka has been his second favourite opponent since he has scored 9 tests and 8 one day centuries against them, taking the tally to 17. Kiwis have faced Sachin’s wrath (read century) on 9 occasions (4 in tests, 5 in ODIs) while he has scored 2 tests and 5 ODI centuries against arch-rivals Pakistan. 12 times he has scored tons against South Africa, 7 in tests and 5 in limited overs while 7 out of his 100 centuries have come against the West Indies (3 in Tests, 4 in ODIs). 9 times he has raised his bat after scoring a century against England (7 Tests, 2 ODIs) while Bangladesh have had to bear the brunt of his excessive scoring on 6 occasions, 5 times in Tests and once in one dayers, that too last Friday. 8 times he has stroked his way past 100 against Zimbabwe (3 in Tests, 5 in one dayers), 4 times against Kenya and once against Namibia.

 In all, he has scored 51 centuries in Tests and 49 in one dayers. Out of those 51 Test centuries, 20 have seen India win the match, 11 have gone down in a lost cause where 20 have safely drawn the match for Team India. Out of his 49 ODI tons, 33 have seen India emerge victorious, 14 have seen India lose whereas 1 each ended in a drawn (due to rain) and tied encounter. On the whole, this proves that a century is no longer the guarantor of success, but everyone would give a guarantee that Sachin’s hunger for runs has made him a gem of a cricketer!

By umersharif

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Should Sachin Retire from ODIs? Majority say YES

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Opinions are never right or wrong, never constant and yes, the opinions are changing. “You can’t contain Sachin’s deeds in a statistical frame. He brings unstinted joy to the art of batting. Statistics will happen because cricket is about runs and wickets. But how can you evaluate Sachin’s contributions by just counting the number of runs he has scored. To me, he best symbolizes the heights an individual can rise to dominate a team sport. Words can never capture the beauty of Sachin’s cricket,” this is just one of many quotes from the cricketing legend Kapil Dev on Sachin Tendulkar who now feels that it’s time Sachin quit ODIs. “From what we have seen in the last three months, he should have announced his retirement before the World Cup. It’s important to know that every cricketer has his time,” Kapil told ‘Headlines Today‘.

Surprisingly, it’s not just Kapil, but a large number of Indians seem to be of the opinion that the god of cricket should leave one-day cricket and it was quite evident in a Times of India online poll which concluded that 57 percent of respondent feels that Sachin should retire from ODIs. While 41 percent answered ‘No’ to the question ‘Should Sachin retire from ODIs?’, as many as 57 percent of respondents voted ‘Yes’.

TOI had nearly 47,000 people responding to its poll out of which 19,127 voted ‘no’ and 26,813 answered in favor of the question and around 817 (2 percent) people were undecided.

The calls come from different corners asking Tendulkar to call it quits from one-day cricket and many eminent cricketers were heard echoing the public opinion including Kapil Dev, EAS Prasanna, Sourav Ganguly and Kirti Azad. Ganguly once said, “The thing I like most about Sachin is his   intensity. After being in the game for so long, he still has the same desire to do well for India in any international match. I tell you what, this man is a legend.” And today he says, “Sachin has to ask himself whether he is good enough to play one-day cricket day in and day out; whether it’s helping him missing tournaments and playing a one-day series after 8-9 months; whether it’s helping him as a one-day player or if it’s helping Indian cricket as a one-day team. If Sachin can’t get an answer to these questions, he has to go.”

Former Indian cricketer EAS Prasanna backed Ganguly and Kapil and said, “If he continues to fail like this, people will have a wrong impression of him. I think it is better to retire when he is at his best,” MSN reports.

Former test cricketer Kirti Azad said, “The selectors should waste no time in dropping Tendulkar, Dravid and Laxman from the national team if they do not retire on their own following the massive drubbing in the Test series against Australia.”

The genuine thought process that went into the call for Sachin’s retirement from one-day cricket by general public is quite questionable as it’s highly possible that the public anger and frustration over India’s pathetic show Down Under, Ricky Points decision to retire, and the opinions of former players have influenced the results of the poll.

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Shoaib says Sachin ‘can’t finish a game’

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An innings-by-innings breakdown of Tendulkar's...

Image via Wikipedia

Pakistan cricket’s enfant terrible Shoaib Akhtar has stirred yet another controversy, this time questioning the class and temperament of India’s batting stalwarts Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid.

In his just-published autobiography ‘Controversially Yours’, the temperamental Pakistan speedster has accused Tendulkar of being scared to face his scorching pace on a slow Faisalabad track.

He also claimed that Tendulkar and Dravid were not match-winners nor did they know the art of finishing games.

“….Vivian Richards, Ricky Ponting, Brian Lara and the likes of them are great batsmen who dominated with the bat and were truly match-winners. Initially, when I bowled against Sachin, I found these qualities missing. He might have had more runs and records, he lacked the ability to finish the game,” he said in the book, to be formally launched on Friday.

Akhtar, who announced his retirement during the World Cup this year, also cited an example where he felt that Sachin was mighty scared to face him.

“We would have faced a humbling defeat in the series but for the fact that we reined in Sachin Tendulkar.

“What went in our favour was that Sachin was suffering from tennis elbow! This severely handicapped the great batsman. We managed to psychologically browbeat him.

“We bounced the ball at him and were able to unnerve him. I returned to the dressing room that first day with the knowledge that Sachin was not comfortable facing fast and rising ball. He was distinctly uncomfortable against me. That was enough to build on”, he said.

“I bowled (Sachin) a particularly fast ball which he, to my amazement didn’t even touch. He walked away! That was the first time, I saw him walk away from me — that, too, on the slow track at Faisalabad. It got my hunting instincts up and in the next match I hit him on the head and he couldn’t score after that”, Akhtar wrote.

The 36-year-old Akhtar, who had scalped 178 wickets in 46 Test and 247 I wickets in 163 ODIs, said that Tendulkar and Dravid who have together conjured over 56,000 international runs (over 33,000 by Tendulkar and over 23,000 by Dravid) are not “match winners”.

“I think players like Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid weren’t exactly match winners to start with, nor did they know the art of finishing the game,” Shoaib said.

Sachin though, said that ‘it was below his dignity’ to reply to Akhtar’s remark against him. “It is below my dignity to comment on what Shoaib has said,” he said.

Akhtar on the other hand, who played for Shah Rukh Khan co-owned Kolkata Knight Riders during IPL has also accused the Bollywood superstar and former IPL commissioner Lalit Modi of “cheating.”

“Shah Rukh and I talked about my not being happy with the money settled on me. Shah Rukh and Modi got me to agree. I should have never listened to Modi and Shah Rukh,” he said in the book.

Akhtar also spoke at length about politics in Pakistan Cricket Board. He didn’t shy away from taking a dig at two former captains Wasim Akram and Shoaib Malik.

He didn’t stop short of calling Malik a “stoodge of PCB chairman Naseem Ashraf” and that’s why he was made the captain.

Akhtar has also alleged that he was cheated by Shah Rukh Khan and former IPL Chairman Lalit Modi. He states, “Shahrukh and I talked about my not being happy with the money settled on me. Shahrukh and Modi got me to agree. I should have never listened to Modi and Shahrukh.” Akhtar, who retired from cricket following the 2011 World Cup, has also shockingly revealed that he tampered with the ball claiming, “everyone tampers with the ball. I did so too. Tampering should be legalised.”

Source – REUTERS

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The Last Match of the Great Wall

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As the whole world watches, amidst the thunderous applause from the crowd and the players, the man walks past the ground, ending a legendary era of class, passion, and rectitude in the game of cricket – a scene best wished for The Wall of Indian Cricket, Rahul Dravid as he plays his last ODI match. He is a man the world adores for his skills and techniques, but the real worth of the great cricketer has often been hidden in the shadow of his contemporary legends, Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly.

Rahul - The Wall

What will his absence mean to the world cricket? We are going to miss the graceful flicks, the breathtaking timings, and the poetry in motion on the crease – those standards of cricketing fast vanishing from the game in this new era of unorthodoxy and pinch hitters. He epitomized the test cricket and played the role of India’s ‘go-to man’ in pressure situations. Nearing the end of an embarrassing two-month England series in which victory looked far ahead of Team India, Dravid’s exit from ODIs will definitely leave a void in the squad, the dependability factor which many wonder if any can fill.

The Wall of India

Great talents cannot be hidden and so was Dravid’s who was spotted by former cricketers seeing an amazingly skillful kid scoring a century on debut for his school team. Fondly called Jammy by his classmates, the Bangalore boy began his cricketing career in his early teens as he represented the state at the under-15, under-17 and under-19 level. He made his one-day debut in 1996 against Sri Lanka replacing the spoiled kid of Indian cricket Vinod Kambli. He mastered the art of this gentleman’s game and lived by it for over 15 years now, a great cricketing saga that can never be erased from the books of cricket. In 2007, he become the third Indian player and the sixth in the world to score 10,000 runs in ODI cricket and with one match to go, he has 10,820 runs from 343 matches to his credit. The 38-year-old right-hander has scored 12 hundreds and 82 fifties.

Records are many but to cite an unusual one, he is the highest scorer to be overlooked for the Man of the Match award. Despite his career best 153 against New Zealand, the MoM went to Sachin Tendulkar for his unbeaten 186. Though a fault of none, he has been overshadowed, not once but many a times, by some of the equally great performance from his contemporary stars. The delight of his debut ODI century in 1997 was sunk at the glory of Saeed Anwar’s then world record of 194.

Mr. Dependable

Against the popular notion, Rahul Dravid holds the record of scoring the second fastest fifty by an Indian in one-day cricket. His 82 fifties in ODI is the second highest by an Indian and the third highest by any in the history of cricket. He has been a part of two of the largest partnerships in world cricket – A 331-run stand with Sachin Tendulkar for the second wicket against New Zealand in 1999 and a 318-run partnership with Sourav Ganguly.

He has always been in the scene, cricket never left him neither he did. His embraced the spirit of the game so tight that he emerged victorious at each falls. And now, as he walks down the crease, one last time in the blue jersey, it bleeds not blue but tears down the eyes of his loyal spectators who loved the glorious game in its entirety.

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Author – Binu Paul,SI