Is Sachin Tendulkar Killing the Young Batting Talent?

In Mahabharata, the great Indian Epic, there’s this story of King Yayaati borrowing youth from his son Puru to continue enjoying all the pleasures a King of his position could command. Is Sachin too, eating into careers of promising youngsters like Rohit Sharma, Suresh Raina, Cheteshwar Pujara etc.?

What else can be said when Sachin decides to return to play against a pedestrian England team? And look what happened? Who had to sit out the Bangalore ODI? Young Rohit Sharma, who played a very crucial Innings when India were stuttering while chasing a D/L target in the earlier match. Rohit had shown lot of promise on the trip down under and needs to be given confidence. Instead, he is being shunted in and out of the team and his position in the batting order too, is frequently being moved up and down. This may ruin his career but so what Sachin’s pile of runs will keep on increasing!

Does Indian team really need Sachin now? Frankly not – at least in ODI’s and certainly not while playing in India and most definitely not against this England side. This present ODI team has done well in last six months. In Asia cup, against Sri Lanka and half way through this series against England. All without Sachin. Even on his return, one really expected Sachin voluntarily bat down the order thereby keeping the Sehwag – Gambhir partnership, which has been very fruitful in last one year, keeping going. This much of a sacrifice was expected from the great man. But he chose not to.

In tests yes Sachin Tendulkar does have role to play for at least a year. Especially with Ganguly gone and Dravid almost certainly will go. But even in Test as well as ODI, what more really can he achieve in may be another year or so? A few more Hundreds may be. But what kind of difference it will make to his already huge stature? The records? He already hold every record in the book, which even he should know are going to be broken one day or the other. So why kep going?

Even after having achieved everything under the sun, what makes Sachin crave for more? In that Mahabharata story, Yayaati was reluctant to return youth to his son even after thousand years! Sachin too, is reluctant to call it quits even after glorious cricketing life for nearly two decades and denying promising youngsters to showcase their talent.

Australia Lose Once Again – This Time Rugby League World Cup

Readers of this blog might be surprised to see an unusual subject – Rugby - of this post. But, the result of Saturday’s Rugby League world cup final is surely one of the major upsets in 2008. And yes, here’s an Indian rejoicing over Kangaroos being floored by the Kiwi’s.

Like most of Indian sports lovers, I know very little about Rugby. I only know that there’s something called Rugby League and Rugby Union. The only reference to Rugby comes when you follow the interests of Cricketers from southern hemisphere – South Africa, New Zealand and Australia. Obviously Rugby is not for Indians. It is too physical a sport for their comfort. The Indian Psyche is best suited for a leisurely sport like Cricket where even a T20 game lasting for three hours is ‘fast paced’ Forget the body tackles, even a physical contact is asking for punishment, as Gautam Gambhir learnt a hard way. But this news of All Blacks toppling hot favourites Kangaroos to win the World cup suddenly attracted my attention and there was this feeling of ‘O these bigheaded Aussies! They deserve it’

The Guardian reports that following one sided defeats of England and New Zealand in the league stages, the Aussie media was suggesting a Rest of World XIII to have a semblance of contest with the Australian team. But in the final, the Black caps really turned it on to pull off a major upset and delight to the Kiwi public.

The Kiwi public could well have a double delight had their Cricketers not let the Ricky Ponting’s men off the hook. At the end of second day’s play of the recently concluded test match in Brisbane, New Zealand clearly had upper hand. Probably Vettori and his men could not withstand ‘the victory staring in their eyes’ and in the end surrendered meekly.

This year 2008 has not been particularly good for Australian sport. Their all conquering Hockey team lost in Olympics semi final. Their Cricket team is on the verge of losing its number one status to India. Now it has lost a prestigious World Crown in Rugby. We will wait and see how this proud nation bounces back.

FedEx Develops a Snag: Tennis in 2008

International tennis season ended last week with Masters Open in Shanghai. At the same time last year, Roger Federer seemed invincible. Ardent Federer fans like me didn’t mind handing over the clay court season to Rafael Nadal. After all, the previous Wimbledon great, Pete Sampras, too never won the French Open. Even though Nadal ran very close to Roger Federer in 2007 Wimbledon finals, no one ever doubted his invincibility.
The year 2008, however, started on the wrong foot for Roger Federer. Serbian Djokivic pipped him for the Australian Grand Slam. The clay court season predictably went to Nadal. Federer on his part was sure that he would hold on to his crown at Wimbledon. But the worst came true for him as he lost an epic five setter to Nadal.
This loss really shook him to the core. To him this loss was as if his strongest bastion has fallen. Throughout the rest of the year, he could not overcome this shock. Coming close to it was his early exit in Olympics. He did win the doubles gold, but one could see his effort he was not required to put in earlier. He was clearly required to draw heavily on his reserves.
In his triumph at US open too, he seemed to carry the monkey of Wimbledon loss on his shoulders. The psychological beating was followed by injuries and fitness worries. The latter half of the year saw the rise of another Federer nemesis – Andy Murray. Even though these three musketeers, Nadal, Djokovic and Murray still hold RF in high regard, they now believe that he can be beaten. Clearly the Federer power is on the wane.
Can he make a comeback in 2009? Past masters like Borg and Edberg are putting in their theories as to what changes he should make in his game to regain top spot. It is not going to be easy though. Firstly, he has to get over the shattering feeling of loss at his ‘very own’ Wimbledon. For him this is a struggle with himself. He also needs to realize that the others are catching up with him. Again, the young brigade has an advantage of at least five years. But still, a more pragmatic and fit Roger Federer can certainly prolong his reign at the top. It remains to be seen I what frame of mind he steps on to the courts of Australian Open.