By BV Swagath
While the entire cricketing world is expecting Sachin Tendulkar to call it a day because of his fading skills as a batsman, the BCCI seems to be having different ideas. The Board seems to have given a free run to Sachin Tendulkar in continuing to play despite all his recent failures and struggles to survive on the pitch. The Board has left the ‘to retire’ or ‘not to retire’ decision entirely in the hands of Tendulkar.
There were news reports that Sachin Tendulkar had a chat with the Selection Committee Head Sandip Patel on his retirement. However, the reports were quashed and what happened according to some news sources is that it was a very short chat lasting a little over a minute. It is learnt that there was no mention about any ‘retirement’ but instead it was Sandip Patel asking Tendulkar to continue what he has been doing, which is to keep on trying his best for India.
Well the 39-year-old Tendulkar might be trying his best every time he comes out in the middle but if he continues to come up with a string of poor scores, then we have to assume Team India to be playing practically with only 10 players! Right now Tendulkar has become a serious liability in the Indian team who is only there in the XI because of his past laurels. Unfortunately all those past feats do not matter to the opposition bowlers who have been constantly dismissing him for cheap scores.
All these years, Tendulkar has been a cut above the rest because of his skills of picking up the line and lengths early to position himself to play various shots. Now it is clear that Tendulkar has lost that ability otherwise why the Master Batsman would be tamed twice by Monty Panesar in the Mumbai Test?
