While reading about India’s unfortunate performance against the South Africans this week in the first test, I realized I have been watching Sachin Tendulkar, the only batter who showed some real fight in the match, play cricket for nearly 20 years!
I am an Australian, and in 1991, I was still looking forward to my ninth birthday. Like other boys my age, I loved my cricket and 1991 was also the year when Sachin, not yet the ‘Little Master’ first strode onto Australian fields and began showing us Aussies how it’s done.
Tendulkar scored two centuries in that tour including an unbeaten 148 in Sydney. From there, well, the rest is history isn’t it? He’s the highest ever run scorer in both one day and test matches, he has an excellent test batting average of 55.35 and he’s said to be the best batter ever, second only to Donald Bradman. He’s also a straight up gentleman, and is highly respected by cricketers and fans around the world, especially in Australia. We all loved watching his fierce on field battles with Shane Warne, and Warnie himself has said that he’s never played against anyone better.
Now, nearly two decades past, I am astonished to see the Master still out there in the middle swinging the bat with precision and class, even when the soldiers are falling around him. He knocked up a cool 100 in the second innings bringing him even closer now to his next milestone of 50 test match centuries. With seven more to get, it may just be that we’ll all have the privilege of watching Sachin play for a few years more. What a champ.
Contributed by Jeremy Veitch