How sachin changed his game against Pak.
Guy is genious.
http://www.wisden.com/misc/subs/page.asp?colid=44121373
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Showing a bit of leg
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Sachin Tendulkar’s new “floating technique” is the latest in his intriguing battle of wits with opposing bowlers. Against Pakistan last week, Tendulkar deliberately took guard outside leg. He admitted that it was not his normal guard for international matches: he wanted the bowling directed closer to his stumps.* So he exposed his stumps as bait. The three fast Pakistani fish bit, and he produced an innings that is now part of cricket lore. *
Tendulkar had to counteract a strategy now commonly used to keep him quiet. Glenn McGrath bowls wider outside off to him than he does at any other batsman.* McGrath claimed that a frustrated Tendulkar dared him to bowl at his stumps when they clashed at Centurion on Feb 15. McGrath retorted: “Why should I bowl at your strengths and get punished?” * :k: macgrath
But Tendulkar wanted Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis and Shoaib Akhtar to do just that. Tendulkar said his plan was to lure the Pakistanis into trying yorkers. He then feasts on the misfired ones, flicking them to square leg by quickly moving across the stumps, or freeing his arms to blast through the covers. He made 57 runs in front of the wicket, and 25 in the square-leg region. He picked them off like ripe fruit, and had ample time to do that: 60 of his 98 runs came off the back foot.
In the group game against Australia, Tendulkar moved quickly back and across his stumps to the Aussie plan of bowling outside off. He was the only Indian batsman consistently to get behind the line of the Brett Lee Express.
Unlike Sunil Gavaskar’s late-career shuffle, Tendulkar’s feet movement is not pronounced before delivery. Don Bradman wrote in his Art of Cricket that he favoured a slight foot and bat-backlift movement as the bowler neared his delivery stride. And even The Don exposed his stumps - against the Bodyline attack, to hit through the off side.
Gavaskar’s shuffle across the stumps, which he started after a horror trot with the bat in 1982-83, came before delivery. It was risky. There was no margin for error. Any misjudgment of speed or movement of an accurate ball inevitably meant being bowled or lbw. Michael Holding went around the wicket in the Kingston Test of 1983 and uprooted Gavaskar’s leg stump with the first ball of India’s innings.
Tendulkar also ran that risk against Australia. And eventually he was trapped in front by Jason Gillespie, when he missed a cleverly disguised slower ball while moving across his stumps to play to leg. But that didn’t stop Tendulkar trying his pro-active strategy against Pakistan. It worked, and enriched the ongoing story of plots and counter-plots in his career.
Neutralising Shane Warne in India in 1997-98 is the most talked-about part of that saga. A slightly more open stance and aggressive footwork took care of Warne’s usual ploy of aiming at the bowler’s footmarks outside leg stump. Tendulkar’s battering of Warne at the old Brabourne Stadium in Mumbai in the first match of that tour - he hammered an unbeaten 204 for Mumbai - was a breathtaking destruction of the opposition’s primary weapon. In terms of sheer dominance, it was probably his greatest innings, and it set him up for a series in which he scored 446 runs in the three Tests, at an average of over 100. Warne, meanwhile, averaged 54 with the ball.
Since then, the Stop-Sachin plots have included bowling outside leg (Nasser Hussain) and keeping him off strike (Steve Waugh). But it was Tendulkar himself who changed his original free-stroking game, in which he looked to dominate from the start. His relatively subdued wait-and-watch batting strategy started in 1999, after India were bowled for 83 by New Zealand at Mohali. He made an unbeaten 124 in the second innings, but in it began the process of giving bowlers and conditions more respect than he had done before.
In this World Cup, Tendulkar has reverted to his old devastating self - he asks questions of bowlers instead of answering them. India’s fortunes in the Super Sixes could depend on how often he is allowed to do this.