Sachin Tendulkar Profile by CricketArchive

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Player:

SR Tendulkar

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DateLine: 5th June 2008

 

Sachin Tendulkar is the biggest cricketing icon that this world will ever see. It is no lying that when he comes to bat, the whole of India comes to a standstill. This is only due to that fact he is the most complete batsman on this planet, probably only after Sir Don Bradman. The biggest compliment he received was when the Late Don himself said that Sachin reminded him of himself. And that was way back in 1998.

 

A full range of strokes means that he has all the shots in his repertoire and some more, as he can play a few cheeky shots as well. it is no wonder then that even the opposition players and crowd stand up and cheer when he is on song. The most famous jibe from the Australian crowd is that ‘Let Australia win, but let Tendulkar get a hundred’. No wonder then, that some of his finest performances have come against Australia, the overwhelmingly dominant team of his era. His century as a 19-year old on a lightning fast pitch at the WACA is considered one of the best innings ever to have been played in Australia.

 

Though he has adopted a noticeably conservative approach in the last quarter of his career, there are no apparent weaknesses in Tendulkar's game. He can score all around the wicket, off both front foot and back, and has made runs in all parts of the world in all conditions. He hates losing and set about to be the best batsman there is after he was turned down by Dennis Lillee at a pace bowling clinic in Chennai because of his short height.

 

Tendulkar's innings have been too many and too good to point a few of them. Each innings of his is cheered on and on by millions across the world that each of them has a separate time and space. It is a fact that he has all the bats with which he has scored his tons. His greatness was established early as he was only 16 when he made his Test debut. He was hit on the mouth by Waqar Younis but continued to bat, in a blood-soaked shirt. His first Test hundred, a match-saving one at Old Trafford, came when he was only 17 and went on to score 16 Test hundreds before he turned 25.

 

In 2000 he became the first batsman to have scored 50 international hundreds, and he currently holds the record for most hundreds in both Tests and ODIs. So much is Tendulkar's invincible aura that nowadays his fans have become so unforgiving that anything less than a hundred is considered to be a failure. Nothing better sums up this gem of a cricketer than the words of his greatest contemporary, Brian Lara, who once famously said, “Sachin is a genius, I am a mere mortal”. He added a new chapter to his already glittering career when he went past Brian Lara to become the highest run getter in test history. He also became the first player to get to 40 test hundreds and that hundred in the final test match against the Aussies helped India to regain the Border Gavaskar trophy.