Monday, April 26, 2010

Sachin Tendulkar at the receiving end

This was one last chance for Sachin Tendulkar to showcase his talent as a captain and would have been great when he was captaining a side where he not only was born and bought up but also learnt how to play cricket. But, when he once again lost in the finals of the IPL, he would be considered as one of the worst captains India has ever seen though that is not really the case. Sachin was successful in winning 10 out of the 14 13 games he featured in, if the encounter against the Kolkata Knight Riders is omitted from the list in this year's IPL.

Sachin Tendulkar was responsible for 5 of the 10 wins which constitute 50% of the wins that the Mumbai Indians had and then for a team with just one international batsman to make it to the top of the table is really something great. However, his dropping of Sanath Jayasuriya would always go down as a bad or ugly decision as far as critics go. Jayasuriya would have played a role as a hard hitting batsmen who would have taken the number of international batsmen in the side to two. Added to that would have been is left arm orthodox which is better than someone like Kieron Pollard's medium fast.

Any captain who is set to face the team to which he has lost earlier and that too in the knock out stages of the tournament is indeed unlucky. And, Sachin Tendulkar is one such unlucky chap and more so when he lost in front of his own people. The Mumbai Indians faced the RCB in the semis and the Chennai Superkings in the finals, both of whom had beaten them earlier in the league stages. I remember the Pakistan team in the 2nd world T20 last year where it faced Sri Lanka against whom they had suffered a defeat in the super eights but won the finals convincingly.

Sachin Tendulkar was the captain of the Titan cup in 1996 which India won after beating a South African team which until then had remained unbeaten in the tournament. South Africa had won three games each against India & Australia before losing to India in the finals. Similarly, Sachin Tendulkar was a part and the architect of the Indian team that beat Australia in the Sharjah cup in 1998 after Australia had won all of its league stage games against the Kiwis and India. Though Sachin Tendulkar's Mumbai Indians didn't win all the matches in the league stage, they were the table toppers and losing out in the finals really hurts not only Sachin Tendulkar and Mumbai but also to all cricket fans.

Unlike our prediction, the winning team this time neither had a player wearing the Purple cap not the orange cap. Apologies for that.

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