Top five innings in ODIs by Sachin Tendulkar: A personal research

Some call him GOD, while others call him SELFISH, he is the one and only Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar, the five feet five inch run-machine, who has more than 60 records to his name.

His retirement from ODIs has sent the whole nation (even his detractors) in tears. When I took a look on his 24-year old career, there was a special onus on me to choose his top five IDPF (Intensive Display by a Player on the Field) innings in ODIs.

It was not at all an easy task to choose from 463 matches that he played in these years but when I sorted out the list, I was surprised to find that out that in his top 5 IDPF performances, 4 came out of his bat and 1 with the bowl and in those 4 batting performances, he didn’t have a century in 2 (IDPF is not about scoring centuries or taking 5 wickets).

So let us have a look at his 5 IDPF performances:

Sachin Tendulkar (file photo)

1. Kill me first if you want to win: It was a day before my birthday and India has a very bad record in November. Chasing a mountain of 351 runs to win against the Aussies in Hyderabad in 2010, India set off with rapid-fire fours by Sachin Tendulkar. If you look at the scorecard, only four out of India’s 11 players crossed 10 runs.

Sachin scored 175 in India’s three run-loss (50.43 percent of India’s runs) and the second highest being Suresh Raina (59 off 59 balls). So it was easily a Sachin show at Hyderabad.