Tendulkar's lone six in the IPL

The fact that Sachin Tendulkar has hit only one six in the IPL is quite hard to believe not only because it is Tendulkar who is under discussion at the moment but also due to the fact that he stands in the second position when it comes to the highest run scorers in this edition of the IPL. Sachin Tendulkar might be kicking himself when he would have learnt that a bowler in Harbhajan Singh has hit more shots out of the boundary than him. However, if the same is seen from the discipline point of view, Sachin has to be heading in the right direction.

As said earlier, Sachin Tendulkar is the second highest run scorer in the IPL second to only Jacques Kallis with 493 runs from 10 games. He has 3 scores above fifty and an equal number of man of the match awards. Sachin Tendulkar has hardly been the man to hit sixes when compared to someone like Sehwag, Gilchrist, Jayasuriya and Afridi to name a few. Big hitters like Gilchrist, Sehwag, Symonds and Jayasuriya have not been doing exactly what is expected from them and Sachin Tendulkar indeed deserves a lot of applauses for what he has been able to do.

It doesn't mind as to how many sixes a batsman has been able to hit when the team for which he plays is found to top the charts after ending in the second position from the last in the 2009 edition. In the 2008 edition, it was Sanath Jayasuriya who hit the maximum number of sixes when he hit 31 of them only to see his team not make it to even the semis of the same. If Sachin Tendulkar was to hit more sixes, he wouldn't have had so much success in the areas mentioned above. It is the job of a tail end batsman like Harbhajan whose sole duty with the bat is to whip it through the air and see the ball fly over the ropes.

Harbhajan is not responsible if he fails with the bat when his duty is to bowl the opposition. But, Sachin Tendulkar is gifted with the responsibility to take the batting further with no other experienced batsmen in his side. One can see signs of the great Australian captain Steve Waugh whose individual records hardly speak for him. Steve Waugh has been able to hit only three hundreds in his entire ODI career lasting 324 matches. But, all those three centuries have been referred to as "captain's knock" with the 120* against South Africa in the super sixes being the highlight of them all.