The words were great, the anology well, quite unique but the message quite unimpressive to say the least. When Rahul Dravid failed in his trip to Australia last year on his returning trip to down under this year he was first reported anxious and after his great performance in Adelaide, now its Sachin's turn to be frowned upon. Had this 200 run innings be of Dravid and his strike rate of 47 he would be considered to be playing for his team and holding one fort up while letting Laxman run with his blazing form. But when Sachin does it, we pull him down from his olympus? Absurd!
The fact remains the man is still the youngest and the fastest to reach 9000 runs and with over 65 centuries in both forms of the game. The man is not the greatest man to have ever played the game but is definitely not too far from it either.
For more than a decade he has held the post for our team in both forms and to compare his any innings watchful or not with words such as painful is not only a insulting to him but to all his efforts put in. We all have bad days at office that doesn't mean we want people to disgrace us for it. He knows he isn't doing as good a job as even he would want to, and he is trying to do better- the result 200 runs which even though have come with a price of time have resulted in placing a mamoth total.
When he doesn't make runs we complain, when he does we criticize,can we not sit back and enjoy how he can show up and time and again make the runs inspite of how much we all talk about him and put pressure on him?
It is quite appauling to read an article like this. If it were for me, I would just enjoy Sachin's role in this innings as the sheath anchor while letting his other mate do the shot making. It is not characteristic of him but certainly does not make him any less great.
Change is the only unchanged law of nature.It's true for Sachin too.The power,reflexes he wielded at younger times is bound to be affected with age.The care to keep the imagae and reputation of his bat must be puting extra pressure on him.But inspite of all these his game is still far superior than most of the contemporaries and I am sure We are going to see the same old Tendulkar.This name simply facinates millions of Indians world over and would continue to be so for time to come.
Excellent article... specially since the proceedings are on... its very insightful commentary...
One is apt to pass judgements on our players... without looking up their state of mind... in this case a bit of "off form"... add repetition of bad lbw decisions...
& a media ready to malign the giant... after all mud shows best on something pristine white... when a hero falls its a story... & at times media waits to write that home...
Not to forget teams that virtually prepare (& in this case atleast rightly so) strategies around getting one player out...
today's century by Tendulkar was one of the best... it had none of his stroke plays... none of his flashes of the bats...
but a tedious one against the crowds... giving no room for the umpires to fail him... & bypassing any team strategy to get his priced scalp...
Very cliched ... yet true "greatness is not in never falling... but in rising back to the top after a fall"...
& to the Imran khans of the world... who believe tendulkar never sees the team through a difficult victory.. the right perspective is.. the day tendulkar clicks.. there is no difficulty left ..
If Sachin plays strokes play and gets out , people say why he is playing like that he has lot of time in he test match...If he plays slow, you say he descends from olympus. This is the best way to play in test match...Sachin is great any way...
ok, i can understand if this was supposed to be a novel, and the writer expected to win a literary prize for it; and in that case, i wouldnt waste my time reading it. but this is a report, and the whole point of it is to say how well tendulkar came out of his bad form and played a superb innings. a news report is supposed to give facts and figures and not paint out the various feelings going inside the writer's mind. for that, there is a different platform and different target readers. the reporter needs to go back to school and brush up his fundamentals. and a poor editing job, too, since it is the editor who lets stuff like this appear online. next time, please please please be careful.
GOd!!!! he does well..he does poorly..all the air time,the print ..all the space on him..u think there is no other player.Lemme tell u something.heroes dont ask ask for waiver when they can afford it(paying ur taxes is the highest form of patriotism :after laying dwn ur lives)..heroes dont endorse what they know is not all that healthy(Gopichand set a real example) naeem
Wow!!! This article sure needs to be on the shrtlist of the pulitzer equivalent for sports reporting. What i liked , more than the consummate use of language, was the insight into a work of art in the making, and the unravelling of the science behind it. In this article, the author wields his pen with the precision of a surgeon's scalpel to lay bare the nerves under the skin, and finishes it off with the flourish of an artist who's discovered glitter on his easel and illuminates the canvas for us mere mortals. Way to go mate.....i may not have agreed with u before, but this piece was from way up there.
Well done,Prem. Only the other day some webistes and mainstream newspapers were running a hate campaign against Tendulkar, shouting that Tendulkar is finished and that he should be dropped from the team! Now some will change the track and start praising him to the heavens. Such irresponsible jorunalists and websites, with the exception of Prem and Rediff need to be banned for life! One wonders whether these hate mongers do not have another hidden agenda! Millions of fans including this writer never lost faith in you,Sachin and you must have noticed it in my opinion attached to the article of Dean Jones in this very webiste.Just ignore these ignoramauses and morons and just go and beat Hayden and Australians in their home turf and prove to the world that you are the cricket god and no one else can claim that spot!!
