Sachin "Run"esh Tendulkar

With a pen name Sachin, I guess it becomes my obligation to blog about the Little Master whenever he hits a century and this time it wasn’t one but two against the contenders for the top ranking in the ICC test championship and not Bangladesh as was the case with earlier centuries.

47 and counting read the status message of one of my friends on Google talk chat messenger. Just days earlier it was 46 and counting. This man just keeps going on and on. A schoolboy prodigy to the mainstay of the batting line-up shouldering expectations of a billion people every time he walks to the crease, Sachin continues to amaze fans, commentator and critics alike.

Sachin Tendulkar

His batting has evolved and now he is not the destroyer he was maybe ten years back but ask any opposition team captain who is the most prized wicket in the Indian batting line-up and I would bet it would be Sachin. In ODI’s his batting though not as explosive as earlier has been a main reason for India’s success in the shorter version of the game. With stroke makers galore in the team Sachin serves as the lynch pin holding up one end letting the others play their natural game. That said he does still play the explosive innings when the occasion demands it, 175 against Australia was a prime example (I would rather not talk about the heartbreak of the result). In tests with the retirement of Saurav Ganguly, that meant one less senior member in the middle order. Even in the current series, Rahul Dravid’s absence though was felt in the first test, which we lost badly, Sachin was the mainstay of the batting order in both tests. Yes, Sehwag scored more runs in the series than Sachin, but it was the role that Sachin played, as the anchorman that mattered especially in the context that “The Wall” was conspicuous by his absence.

Ricky Ponting must be cursing himself for having been born in the same era as Sachin. However much he tries to get close to the great man, Sachin always manages to put some day light between the two with respect to record of most number of centuries. Records don’t matter results do, some may argue but still the very fact that the highest run scorer and the cricketer with the highest number of centuries is an Indian is a matter of pride. Yes Ponting is younger but given the rate and consistency at which Sachin is going it may be a long time before Ponting can catch up with him and also Ponting is an Australian and considering the fate that Steve Waugh met with the selectors (my opinion has always been Steve could have carried on a little longer and that he was forced out by the selectors) he may not be able to catch up with the Little Man.

Thus continues the journey, which began in 1989 and may possibly end in 2011 with the World Cup in the final in his hometown. Now wouldn’t that be a fantastic ending to the career of the most worshipped cricketer in the world?