Re: Sachin’s the selfless ,dedicated, gem of a character …
I am big fan of Sachin but I could not disagree more. He is just another dude in the long list of mumbai culture of batsmen(Gavasker, Shastri, Vengsarkar et) who give a lot more importance to their personal goal than team goal. I will give you three well documented instance which might change your mind.
Multan Test: This is the test where Sehwag scored triple century and Sachin scored 194*. Sachin was given a set time by then captain Dravid to score his double but he ignored the instruction and slowed down. In order to force the result in that game Dravid went ahead and declared leaving Sachin stranded at 194. Sachin is such a selfish guy that he went ahead and made an issue out of it in press conference.
Batting order change: After the rise of Sehwag in 2001, India suddenly has three world class ODI openers(Sachin, Saurav and Sehwag). Till then Sachin and Saurav were very successful opener ( probably greatest in ODI history). But Sehwag brought lot of flare and aggression at the top of order. Team decided that best strategy would be do ask Saurav and Sehwag to open and let Sachin play at #4 . This will give left-right combination at top and experience of Sachin will be very important at #4 where he can play role of finisher. This was tried for sometime but this dried by Tendulkar’s century. It is hard to score 100s consistently at #4 . Sachin showed his displeasure and considering his popularity and stature team relented. Poor Saurav agreed to play in middle order for the sake of team.
100th 100 v s Bangladesh. This was the worst 100 by Sachin. Because of his love for 100 India lost the match and is facing elimination from Asia cup. 2 days later Virat showed how many run can be scored in 140 deliveries against a better bowling attack. His hundred and India’s bad bowling in death caused India to lose that game.
Donot get me wrong. Sachin is a fantastic player and if someone said that he ALWAYS plays for his record then I will totally disagree. But to say that he is selfless is also not correct. He has shown many times that he puts his personal record ahead of team’s. For me team’s win is most important. Records are just incidental. A good example of players who played for team would be Dravid, Kumble, Ganguly and Dhoni.
spot on with enough anecdotal evidence…great post.
arlei, …you have absolutely every right to open any thread but as I read it, there is nothing in it that suggests you needed a separate thread … except of course rubbing a bit of salt into our wounds! all you are saying is that tendu is the most selfless soul ever embarked on an indian soil … and that all us of shd salute him for that … but guess what, you could have expressed that in million of other threads that are already there … so dont impose your views on rest of the members by opening such threads…