Sunday, November 18, 2007

The Little Genius

There are fewer pleasures in cricket than watching the little master Sachin Tendulkar playing in full form. The cricketing world was lucky to get a taste of that in the 4th ODI between India and Pakistan on Thursday.
Tendulkar was in full swing and when he is in that mood and carrying his innings there is nothing that can stop him; nothing other than self imposed pressure of scoring a century. Tendulkar's 97 in the 4th ODI of the series gave his fans, and there are a lot of those around the world, many glimpses of the old Sachin. It was a treat to watch, even for people like me who were cheering for the other team.
Then again it is hard not to appreciate such true class. Tendulkar did not take a single risk and was not going out of his way to be aggressive, yet he took the opposition out of the game pretty quickly with some amazing fast paced batting. The best part of Tendulkar's genius is that he does with such ease and effortless grace playing wonderful cricketing shots.
On Thursday we saw Sachin display all the array of his shots - the trademark flick to square leg on deliveries that seemed to be pretty decent, the flairing cover drives on seemingly flawless deliveries, the smashing square drives that went to the face within the blink of an eye and then my personal favorite the majestic on-drive that I had to rewind a few times. He is the only batsman who can get a boundary of a forward defensive shot, who can while appearing to be in a defensive frame of my mind actually be taking the attack to the opposition.
Tendulkar's innings was nothing short of awesome. It was a shame he could not get to his century and really these days it seems that the nervous 90s is the only thing stopping him. Maybe in the test series Pakistan can get the scoreboard dude to display Tendulkar to be in the high 90s and get him that way :-)

Make your pitch on this post...



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8 Pitched:

  1. Q said...
     

    Sachin is the best. His critics who have been saying that he is not the same Sachin of old need to see his 99 in the 2nd and 97 in the 4th ODI to see that Sachin is Sachin. He's the best.

    There's no better sight in cricket than watching Sachin in full flow. You r right abt the forward defensive Nazhar - his timing and balance has always been immaculate.

    What a batsman.

  2. Viswanathan said...
     

    He is no genius. He is 'GOD'.

    Stop under rating him. :0

  3. NAzhar said...
     

    yeah great point Q...his balance is immaculate!

  4. obaid said...
     

    Even though he is older, but I think Tendulkar is the fittest he had been for a few years. See my earlier post about tennis elbow - he is not suffering from it anymore.

    Watching him play is alwaysa treat, so I hope for all our sakes that he continues to stay healthy, his bat will do the rest

  5. NAzhar said...
     

    and hope the Indian selectors don't become stupid like they were thinking of a couple of years ago of dropping him...and like they dropped Dravid when they shouldn't have!

  6. Q said...
     

    I know what u mean Ottayan - I believe he is worshipped in India. Do they have a mandir in his honour the way they do for Mr. Bachchan and Rajnikant?

  7. Anonymous said...
     

    Q,

    As far as my knowledge goes there is no temple or mandir dedicated to either Amitabh or Rajinikant.

    There is one for an actress called Khushboo, who is essentially, north Indian but made the Tamil films her own.

    There is a temple dedicated to her.

  8. Q said...
     

    Really? I remember watching a star news coverage showing temples made in the honour of Rajnikant and Amitabh Bachchan...

    Either way, these people are worshipped by the Indians.

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