Why is Sachin Tendulkar the greatest ever?

Sachin Tendulkar

Sachin Tendulkar as a batsman and as a person inspired me the most till date. I have been seeing him since the time of my earliest memories of cricket, when I was just 3 or 4 years old, up till present day, where he is playing his last Test match. I could never have imagined a person who can be so calm, down to earth and without any attitude whatsoever, even after 24 years of successful international cricket.

When I scored good marks in one subject, I used to show a lot of attitude towards all my friends but how can a person be without attitude after playing at that level for this long. If anyone comments about me, I give everyone a nice hearing without even knowing what exactly the truth was but in his 24 years of International Cricket, Sachin never said a word about all his critics he
just let his bat answer all the questions.

These are the two important points which influenced me the most about Sachin.

In the game of Cricket there have been a lot of performers that stood out but Sachin was special and different for various reasons. At an age of 16 years he started playing International cricket which was exceptional and he was facing one of the best attacks of pace bowling against Pakistan with the likes of Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis. He scored his 2nd test hundred in Perth which is considered the fastest track in the world cricket.

When Mark Taylor spoke about his first impression of Sachin during his tour of Australia in 1991-1992 he said, generally Indian batsmen are not that comfortable playing flat batted shots instead they would prefer to play with the full phase of the bat and tend to get in slip cordon but Sachin was very different as he was very fluent in playing both cross batted and flat batted shots which explains Sachin was prepared when he went on to play in Australia.

Another most important point mentioned was he was very comfortable in playing both on front foot and back foot which was a rare sight in the Indian team at that time. I have heard a lot of people criticizing Sachin saying whenever he scores India loses. Though it was proven wrong by stats, till date I never understood what Sachin could have done for other people not playing well. I remember Shane Warne commenting on the Indian team during the early 90’s that India was a defensive team who would prefer not to lose rather than winning a game.

Sachin played at that time and he tried his best for the team to win if you look at Sachin’s batting at that time he was always taking the attack to the bowlers, whomsoever they were and where ever they played, which no one else from the team tried. If you had forgotten that, let us look into some games where India lost when Sachin scored runs.

Let us start with the Coca – Cola cup in Sharjah where India required 237 in 46 overs to qualify into the finals, Sachin fought single-handedly and tried to give India an assured qualification into the finals but that couldn’t happen, as in that match, Sachin scored 143 with the next highest score in the Indian team being just 39 runs!