The decline of Sachin Tendulkar has been very sad. For a batsman who was voted the best batsman after Don Bradman in 2002 by wisden ought to be batting much better these days which is considered the golden age of batting.
The most interesting thing to note is his career pre-2002, look at the figures below which are his figues from his first 100 Test matches. In his first 100 Tests he averaged
57.96, which is nothing short of world class. He got these runs against some of the best bowlers around in his era for example-Warne, Muralithan, Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Curtley Ambrose, Countney Walsh, Glenn MacGrath, Alan Donald, Shaun Pollock and so on. These runs were also scored on more bowler-friendly picthes compared to todays ones.
Code:
Mat I NO Runs HS1 HS2 HS3 Ave 100 50 0
unfiltered 134 215 22 10590 248* 241* 217 54.87 35 42 13
filtered 100 160 15 8405 217 201* 193 57.96 30 34 10
Now look at the figures from his next 34 matches below. As you can see his average is
45.52, which is very disapointing for a man of his class batting in the golden-age of batting. The bowling attacks over the world apart from Australia's are considerably weaker than they were before 2002. The pitches are much, much better to bat on also. He really should be batting better than anytime he was before- he also has less pressure on him to score as the batting order is alot stronger than it was before.
If by next season Tendulkar doesn't get back to his old best than I think it is time for him to retire and leave the game gracefully.
Code:
Mat I NO Runs HS1 HS2 HS3 Ave 100 50 0
unfiltered 134 215 22 10590 248* 241* 217 54.87 35 42 13
filtered 34 55 7 2185 248* 241* 194* 45.52 5 8 3