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Sachin Tendulkar
A lot has been written about Sachin Tendulkar lately and for the past 2-3 years, he has been constantly written off by media and has bounced back even stronger.
I have been an ardent fan of Sachin Tendulkar for as long as I care to remember and will always remain that way. A media is nowadays abuzz with stories revolving around the utility of Sachin Tendulkar in the context of Indian Cricket and whether time has come for him to be shown the door. In my mind I am quite clear that these people will be proven wrong.
Being out of India, I don't have access to Indian print media or television media nor do I have inclination to check it out online for these are the same media people who are known to make a scoop out of a non-event and in the process, miss the whole point and the bigger picture. They are the people who just want to sell more papers, get more TRP ratings or get more website hits. Nothing else. I had been following Indian cricket over the past two or so years solely on Cricinfo which so far I had thought was the only authoritative and unbiased coverage of world cricket.
During the recent series between India and Bangladesh, even that perception was lost. Although in the recent past, I had seen a lot a sensationalist articles on the same I had for some time ignored it. In the series in question, Tendulkar scored two centuries and ended up with the highest aggregate runs, an astonishing average of 127 (the highest) and a respectable strike rate of 57.07. Nobody even came close to him in terms of runs. Still the article that summed up his performance in the second test was negativity personified and it pictured Tendulkar as a liability to the team and not an asset that he certainly is. You just have to read the two articles on Cricinfo to see the two differing points of view and the portray of Tendulkar from "Perfect pacing of innings" to "crawling and struggling to score runs" in just a matter of few days. Although I understand the urge of the authors to earn living by analysing cricket and cricketers, how one batsman; and Tendulkar at that, can go from a great to mediocre cricketer in just a matter of one test, is something I fail to understand. And while we are at that subject, a batsman who has delivered consistently at the highest level for 17 years and has stood among the ruins of Indian cricket in the late 1990s. For a lot of years he was the only reason why people in India were watching cricket.
Perhaps the authors are opinionated by India's dismal World cup campaign and want to find a big enough scapegoat. However they are forgetting that every cricketer (and a cricket team) goes through a bad series and unfortunately for India and Tendulkar that series happened to be the World Cup (Remember Australia in 1992?).
This write-up could probably go on and on but the point is that Tendulkar was and is the greatest batsman the world has seen so far, Don Bradman notwithstanding and will remain so till some other person can surpass him in sheer talent, intensity, hunger for runs and dedication. I just hope the media minds their own business and lets Tendulkar do what he does best. Score runs and win matches for India.
The Player that "WAS"
There has been a lot of talks about removing Sachin from the Indian team, particularly after the world-cup debacle in the West Indies. While I certainly think he is not the same player that he used to be (and for a good measure of 15 years), carrying the hopes of millions of crazy fans at home, he still has plenty to offer to the team. His performances in the tests has gone down tremendously in the past 3 years or so, if you look at his test stats for the past 3 years, they look very good, but the truth is that it looks good because of a few innings. Like the 240 n.o he scores against the Aussies, and some hundreds against the Bangladeshis, apart from those innings, his performance has been really bad. he has scored only one 50 in that period against the better ranked teams. On the other hand, his performance in the ODIs is much better than that in the tests. Although he failed in the WC 2007, it was the only occasion in the WC that he has let his country down.
His die hard fans have pointed out to the fact that he has had a troubled elbow which has let to the fall in his form over the last few years. Well in that case, shouldn't he have declared himself unfit and taken a rest well before the point he actually did? it gives an impression that due to some commercial interests he had to carry on playing even though he was not fit enough to play. This led to some poor performances and thus the whole debate over his form began. So there definitely is some blame to be put on Sachin himself.
It is tough not to compare the cases of Sachin and Sourav (or for that matter Zaheer Khan). Sourav and his fans should be thankful to Greg Chappell, for had it not been Greg Chappell's decision to show Sourav the door, his career might have been finished by now. But instead, it gave Ganguly a reason to mull over his form and sort out his technique and more importantly a challenge to fight back and prove that he is still a cut above the youngsters eying for his position in the team. Same thing happened to Zaheer and now he is back to his best. May be this time it is the turn of Sachin Tendulkar to sit out and spend time to sort out his form. And recharge his batteries and start enjoying the game again. Its very similar to the situation Lara once faced during his career. He had had a great run, broken all the records, taken apart all the bowling attacks in the world. As a result he self admittedly lost the interest in the game, continued to play under the pressure from the board and thus failed to display the same magic in his batting. He then decided to take a break from the game, clear out his mind, recharge his batteries and then came back with a bang. I am sure if Sachin had done the same this blog would not have been written in the first place. I am afraid it is too late for him to make such a decision now, so unfortunately for all the Sachin fans, and the cricket lovers, he is never going to be the same "Player that WAS".