Tendulkar

[Colourful Chaddi]

Im not counting on Tendulkar to ever regain that sort of consistency he had in the 90s. If you see his record in that decade that you will be shocked to see how poorly he has been playing recently, he looks a completly different batsmen.

His last four centuries have took 4 years! He has also has weaknesses in his technique which was one of the most solid tecniques in the 90's. Im sure most of you would agree that he has a problem with the in-coming ball, there is a big gap between his legs and the bat which allows the ball to go through the gate that results in him being bowled.

Tendulkar is finished as a world class batsman, he is now a average Test batsman similar to Pollock as a Test match bowler- both WERE world class but at the moment are only average performers who chip in with great performances only once in a while.

[Doink]

very rightly said, both tendulkar and pollock have lost their touch. i mean look at jayasuriya and lara- as good as ever...

[Colourful Chaddi]

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.

                     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.

                     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