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Text of the page (random words):
re apparently either for sachin or against him if you question his place in the side you are a moron who has no right to express an opinion or an ignorant bum who has never held a bat in his life or someone with a vested interest for all talk that he didn t care about numbers and statistics numbers did seem to matter to the man or at least to the people around him who had a stake in him and many did so the choice of 10 10 2013 to announce his retirement was possibly deliberately crafted and carefully constructed like the 241 he made in sydney in january 2004 numbers may not have mattered to the man but they did to the industry around the man and there is an industry around the man an industry that seems filled with brand merchants product architects advertising honchos and people who launch things perhaps i ought to have said there was an industry around him i would if i can bring myself to talk about god in the past tense i cannot at least not yet numbers did seem to matter he worked hard to get to that 200th test whether he did so because he wanted to himself or because of the people who had invested in him who had a vested interest in prolonging his career we will never know but it had been an open secret for far too long that he would play on until his 200th test and that that 200th test would be played in india indeed it was the worst kept secret in the indian cricket landscape an environment that seems to have a steady growth and not a decline in innuendo and secret handshakes and less and less of assured planning and fact that his retirement in a home series was engineered so blatantly by his cricket board just makes the cricket world sit up again and wonder at the beast at the icc table that we indian fans have created the ogre that we continually endure and support so how did you feel when you heard of the news of tendulkar s retirement me although i sensed since the start of this year that tendulkar would retire after his 200th test and even though i was prepared for the announcement i felt a numbness when i heard the news i cannot imagine an india test team without tendulkar i cannot quite bring myself to accept that someone else will now walk in at the fall of the second wicket there was always a calm sense of assurance that sachin tendulkar would walk to the middle at the fall of the second wicket that he would walk down the pavilion steps or ramp look skyward squeeze his eyes walk purposefully to the wicket take guard and perform his pre stance box adjustment routine that was assurance it gave me comfort and i cannot yet bring myself to accept that the now famous and always assuring pre stance box adjustment routine will now be replaced by the vigorous bat twirl and inside of the helmet visor wipe routine that belongs to virat kohli that acceptance may happen too only because it must tendulkar had given me and many others like me much joy in the 1990s when india got routinely thrashed all around the world he gave me cause to celebrate because of the way he played the game his cricket was simple uncomplicated and beautiful his cricket was untainted and joyous his cricket was pure i had watched with admiration and pride as he grew in stature he was first a kid playing in the midst of grown ups then a boy then a lad then a man and then a god in his country and then a statesman in world cricket he did not want to be a god mind you we made him god and the same people who made him god cruelly called him endulkar in 1996 2006 when he was going through a rough patch as all human beings must and do but that was us fans this god did have clay feet sometimes in the end however there was only one constant he had always played the beautiful game with the same wide eyed enthusiasm he only wanted to play he knew no other life i had watched him score 119 in manchester yes that innings that really announced his arrival on the world stage i was in england in those days a few months later i moved to australia and there i watched every ball he faced when he made 148 in sydney in january 1992 in the company of ravi shastri but more importantly a month later i watched in awe with pride and a growing sense of admiration as he braved the pace of craig mcdermott merv hughes paul rieffel mike whitney and tom moody when he made 114 in perth i had watched the young boy grow up to be a man and then a legend all in the space of 18 months during that defining perth innings a boy wonder had become a man that is to date the best innings i have watched tendulkar play or is it was it that 241 in sydney in 2004 or the 111 in johannesburg in november 1992 or the 177 in nottingham in 1996 or the 169 in cape town in 1997 or the 155 against australia in chennai in 1998 or the 155 in bloemfontein in 2001 or the 193 in leeds in 2002 or the 194 in multan in 2004 or the 154 in sydney in that test in 2008 there are too many wonderful knocks to list but talk about the best tendulkar innings always polarizes opinions like talk about the man himself and that is what you get by having an opinion on tendulkar there is no unique answer was that 241 his best or was it that 194 perhaps that is the point about greatness we can t quit agree on what constitutes greatness although there can t be much doubt on greatness itself and then there were the endless debates on whether tendulkar played for himself or for his team siddhartha vaidyanathan wrote on tendulkar and the clutch question in which he quotes his friend jay who said most fans agree on what is a big game and what is not there comes a time during these big games when most fans smell the moment the moment when the game is balancing on the finest of threads i have seen tendulkar occasionally sense the moment and pounce on it imposing his greatness on the occasion but i feel i ve seen him not seize these moments more often perhaps these arguments would never have happened if tendulkar had finished the game off and won that chennai test against pakistan in 1999 what that ignores is that there were a whole bunch of players who could have stayed with and helped a bruised tendulkar win that game for india perhaps these arguments won t have happened if tendulkar hadn t skied that mcgrath bouncer in the 2003 world cup final what that ignores is that it was perhaps because of tendulkar that india even reached the 2003 world cup final perhaps but that is also an integral part of tendulkar s greatness in a country that is only now getting used to thinking about greatness in cricket fans have to either criticize his 136 in chennai against pakistan for what he did not do or celebrate it for what he did many will say that tendulkar had extended his stay that he ought to have retired from all forms of the game on 2 april 2011 but he continued playing all three forms of the game after that day it was not his responsibility to select himself in the team to play was his choice one we must always respect he had earned it but did we respect him no arguments raged notwithstanding the fact that of the four member middle order who have retired in the last four years india has only found stable and able replacements for rahul dravid cheteshwar pujara and vvs laxman virat kohli four years after his retirement india still does not have a steady replacement for sourav ganguly after trying out yuvraj singh suresh raina s badrinath ajinkya rahane and ravindra jadeja all of these have only had mixed success yet we were keen to disrobe god although it was clearly the duty of the national selectors to have a chat to the man and talk to him about retirement that is if they wanted to replace him did he overstay his welcome no as i indicated earlier in my view he still had a year or two of test cricket left in him the team has already seen the departure of ganguly dravid laxman kumble and perhaps sehwag and zaheer khan these days a team that loses all of its stalwarts in one fell swoop is called australia which thought somewhat arrogantly that there is an endlessly rich talent pipeline that affords selectors the luxury of a brutal revolving door national sporting teams need to carefully nurture talent and this needs the hands of an artist and not the axe of a wood chopper of course tendulkar s place in the indian team has never really been questioned even in 1996 except perhaps marginally in the last one year or so of his career tendulkar still seemed to love the game and every time he took the field seemed to play the game with the same zest that i saw in manchester some 22 years ago and he can still hold that 2 down spot in his retirement announcement tendulkar says it s hard for me to imagine a life without playing cricket because it s all i have ever done since i was 11 years old his job was to play he knew nothing else so the debates will continue to rage and i had one within 5 minutes of his retirement announcement i thought that his best shot was the straight drive to a fast bowler a colleague said it was the upper cut over the slips back arched eyes focused on ball neck slightly inclined yet another said that it was the back foot drive through the covers another said it had to be the casual flick through deep square leg we could not arrive at a meaningful conclusion perhaps one is not necessary we moved instead to a discussion on his best innings ever 241 194 111 177 155 an hour later with no conclusion in sight we moved on to his best odi innings ever and so the night meandered on when an international sportsperson plays for as long as sachin tendulkar has it is hard nay almost impossible to pick out one specific shot one specific innings one specific moment all of them were perhaps equally brilliant all of them were crafted carefully but more importantly all of them were played by a young enthusiastic curly haired lad who loved the game loved playing for india and wanted nothing more than to give pleasure to the people who watched him play today a day after the announcement the numbness is gone the sadness is gone i only feel pleasure pleasure that i watched it all from 1989 to 2013 pleasure that i argued about him for him pleasure that he enhanced the appreciation i have for the game pleasure that he was there as a beacon of hope in 2000 a time when the match fixing saga raged a time when i thought i would abandon my support for the game i loved so much because i had learned that some of the men who played the game had played it to line their own pockets but then god was there he did not know how to cheat or how to throw games he could not be procured and in the end his love of the game is really the measure of his greatness he played for the team always he played for the fans who loved the game always throughout his life he lived cocooned in the warm comfort of his home or on the cricket field he knew of no other life other than cricket meanwhile the arguments will continue unabated mohan krishnamoorthy mohank the author is an unabashed fan of cricket tweets at mohank and blogs at http www i3j3cricket com and mohankaus blogspot com share this share on x opens in new window x share on facebook opens in new window facebook print opens in new window print email a link to a friend opens in new window email like loading 5 comments posted in cricket tagged bcci cricket dungarpur india indian cricket sachin tendulkar i don t want 2 test series posted on 22 september 2013 by bagrat15 2 comments the best duels in test cricket history are ones that have taken hours and hours to describe volumes of books written on years of legend built on memories emerging from multiple corners of views of the same event the talks of the series attract conversations hair raising stories and excerpts and anecdotes creep in a bowler s glare a batsman s bat twirl a fielder s expectant move a battle within the battle all find a place in what later become the turning point of the series the battle becomes spicier after the turning point the underdogs are biting into the big dogs reducing them to carcass by the end of the tour legends are made when the unexpected happens but it takes time to build expectations a team arrives in a new land takes time to settle the food the climate the atmosphere the environment the crowd the cricket the story is sketched in the first few days of the tour there are attempts to alter it in the next few the climax is anyone s guess the constant attempts to out do the expectations makes the series tour more memorable all that is history today the teams travel out of their suitcases players are involved in test matches within a week of arrival play two tests and fly away there is no context there is no rivalry built during the series there is no story to be written it is just academic such series are more for the media and scoreboards than for the fan of the game the teams a fan might want to watch one test just for the sake of watching one he she does not want to follow the team around the tour there is no tour diary to fill it is just a visit report not a tour diary why 2 tests why not just forget the test series and save us the trouble of trying to follow this follow might not even be the right word it is just two scorecards that i have to read that is the series i don t have to read between the lines saeed ajmal got 10 wickets big deal he is going to fly out of the country in 5 days and he will start with a clean slate virat kohli scored a century this series hmmph nobody knows if he can repeat that next month in south africa form what is form in a 2 game series harbhajan under performed sure bad series he will be fine next tour how do you know the 2nd test is when the stories and expectations were to be framed but now 2nd test is when you get your report card it is like deciding the winner of a test match at tea on day 2 of the test you neither know if a batsman has been good or bad for all you know a good series for a player might have meant one fluke 150 and a 70 or just a 6 wicket haul zimbabwe beat pakistan and leveled series 1 1 which team was better how do you know there wasn t even a 3rd test there was no substance to the series just win this game and get the hell out of here and zimbabwe are going to hang on to this win for another few years for all you know frankly a series without substance story thrill fan fare excitement and length amounts to nothing you can squeeze in a bunch of those series and dress it like it matters wrap and bow tie it as a present to someone but the truth will lie bare inside it it still is meaningless it s just not cricket bagrat share this share on x opens in new window x share on facebook opens in new window facebook print opens in new window print email a link to a friend opens in new window email like loading 2 comments posted in cricket tagged cricket future tours meaning test tours dear cricketers talk more please posted on 28 july 2013 by bagrat15 4 comments wright thompson espn was describing an incident from his trip to india a few years ago he mentioned watching the india...
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