Sachin da Kamaal

Given a cricket match with India in the tie and you are sure to have sound bytes flying around about who is doing right and who wrong.

Strangely, there has been flak fired from one quarter saying that Sachin Tendulkar’s innings could have been faster than was. But no one is willing to brave a guess on how much faster it should have been.

Looking back at the Indian innings, it was quite a satisfying effort; but one must still remember that these are days of T20 in which cricketers are used to scoring runs at a much faster rate than their counterparts, say, a decade ago.

But a decade ago, was when Tendulkar was very much in the middle of things, and for such a person to have adjusted and scored 120 at a good rate goes much say not just about his batting skills but also about his ability to evolve his batting style to the needs of the team on the given day.

If India put up a formidable score of 338, a fair credit has to go to Tendulkar for anchoring the innings the way he did. Had he tried to be faster than what he was and had lost his wicket in the process, it’s anybody’s guess how much sharper the criticism would have been about the “old war horse” of Indian cricket.

Let’s not forget that cricket is an unpredictable game, but a score of 338 has ushered in a degree of predictability to the Sunday game – in favour of India.

This is written as England plays its 8^th over. So the outcome of the game is still awaited.

Yet, salutes go to Sachin for putting up a competitive score on the team board.

Kudos!!