Shoaib Akhtar has done it again. He is the centre of attention, managed to invite some controversy and started a debate that perhaps did not even cross the minds of cricket fans.
“I think players like Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid weren’t exactly match winners to start with, nor did they know the art of finishing the game,” Akhtar said on the eve of his book launch in India.
The auto-biography titled “Controversially Yours” is Akhtar at his candid best, and besides Tendulkar many personalities and cricketers come into the cross-hair.
But undoubtedly, the claims putting Tendulkar under the spot-light have managed to ruffle the most feathers, with most experts terming Akhtar’s words as nonsense.
While some members of the press have termed Akhtar “the sales man of the year”, some have put the claims against Tendulkar under the microscope.
The Indian legend’s record speaks for itself but is there any weight behind Akhtar’s claims?
Dawn.com invites its readers to give their view and suggestions.
People are oobssessed with only winning. Then the weak teams will never have great players.
Rather we should measure a players record based on his value.
How many times one has contributed significantly towards saving match ? and
How many times one has contributed significatly towards winning ?
These two parameters should be used together to understand the greatness. This measure will provide better insight.
Most undisciplined, most disruptive , headache for managers & coaches – He should have been thrown out of the team long ago. But Pakistan being Pakistan, no one is accountable.
Everyone already knows tandulkar is not match winning player. But He is cricket lagend.
I would sadly agree with shoain on this. Although we know of great feats that sachin has crossed, i personally never saw him as a match winner. EVen with all the experience, he somehow seemed a bit shaky at times when a winning innings was needed right in the mouth of defeat. In my terms, sachin will surely be known as the greatest in cricket history, but not a match winner.
in my books every record is meant to be broken, as i take everything being ephemeral. and what akhter has said about sachin, so true, if you know what cricket really is……..
Shah
Tendulkar is an intelligent and smart cricketer. Going through stats I find that he has not even once crossed the 500 run mark in a test sereis, which Lara, Bradman, Hammond, Richards, Zaheer Abbas, Mark Taylor and others have done repeatedly. From Indian side you would find the name of Sehwag more often besides such greats as Bradman and Lara rather than Tendulkar on similar records. See for example Inzamam scored 25 test centuries and out of these 17 centuries were scored when Pakistan was the winner. If someone can come up with Tendulkar’s stats on a similar line, we would have at least a criterion to decide if he has been a match winner or not. I would personally rate Viv Richards as a better attacking batsman than Sachin; even Rahul Dravid has many times performed better than Sachin; Rahul’s defense has been phenomenal – just see the stats for the recent series agaisnt England- but then he is also not a match winner. Nevertheless, Tendulkar has been a true professional, a genius, a true fighter and a treat to watch. The kind of drubbing Shoaib received in one of the world cup matches at the hands of Tendulkar and Sehwag that I recall at least settles the score for the two.
match winner doesn’t necessarily wins matches by his own.1.
1.We need to see how many test matches india had won after 1989 and how many times sachin was involved with a decent innings of 50 or 100 in those winning test.
2.We need to see in how many matches india could have won if sachin scores 50 or 100. between 1989 and till now.
3.we need to see how many times india have won since 1989 and sachin haven’t score a fifty in those games.
4.we need to see in how many games sachin scores a 100 and opposition team player also also have posted a century .shows the nature of wickets .
5.we need to see how many times despite of a decent innings by sachin ..india lost the game…this will shows match winners can never be a batsman it will be always a bowler in test match cricket.
You have listed good criteria to analyze, may you can do some data mining an post the results. I think what you will find is that there are ample examples to defend both sides of the debate. There would be many instances where he was the deciding factor in India winning or saving the match and there woud be many examples where he could not lived upto expectations of his fans. And such is the magnitude of his tremendous career. SRT has done enough to command respect and treated by countless as there role model.
Allright,just one question folks,if he is not match winner why he got the highest number of MoM awards?? As a batsman your job is to score runs, and he is the master of that. And Shoaib got him out only six time (3 time in odis,3 times in tests)in his whole career but still has the guts to say that, shame-shame!!!!
Who will read Shoaib’s auto-biography. Is he a good man, even his ex-team mates and countrymen know about it. Is he a good player, he has been a superflop and a troublemaker in the team. So why should someone read his book and why we discuss about him.
He spreads hatred and is never a good man. He needs some conditioning.
(We need not to praise Sachin. Everyone knows about him.)
Cricket is a team game, match winner is a ridiculous term in this context… Tendulkar’s presence has certainly increased India’s win percentage. That is what matters. Shoaib is entitled to his opinion though. Book must be a sell out
The statement of shoaib reflects the india centric views of any average pak citizen.this habit has now become hereditry and can be summerised by Galib lines
.” Usi ko dekh kar jeete hain, jise dekh kar dum nikle .”
Mr Shoaib could have looked at the best qualities in Sachin discipline, dedication, consistency and deft application. But alas, he wants to draw public attention. No one has a utopian persona, so is the case with sachin. Some others may have single handedly won few more matches than sachin but on other fronts will beat them hands down. This is how life is!
Most replies are more emotional than rational and most people are busy taking cheap jibes at a player who has played international cricket for 13 years. Sadly, most of these critics never even saw a first-class match let alone playing one. The fact remains that he didn’t hurl any insult towards the two greats of the game, he only spoke of something which is a fact without any pinch of salt. Even prior to him there were many cricket pundits and experts who have questioned the ability of Tendulkar to finish a game and win it for India, that includes, Tony Greig, Ian Botham, Ian Chappel, Micheal Holding etc. even that includes many former Indian players and greats, one can pull out a plethora of articles and read them to recount. No one with a sound mind can ever question the ability, and the greatness that ability has achieved for Tendulkar or Dravid as a player, they are unquestionably the greats of the game, no doubt about that. But poor Shoaib only riased a question (already questioned by others) about the ability to finish the game which is quite different to having the talent to play the game. I don’t know why people are getting so touchy and upset about it! If you take a line or a paragraph out of context, it can never explain the whole summary and the summary is that Shoaib concedes both to be great players and he never insulted them rather he respects them. Tendulkar has never been a match winner, Kumble was and so was VVS Laxman … Brian Lara, Ranatunga and Dhoni, these are your match winners! Criticism should be taken gracefully if it’s not entirely out of place.
If Sachin is not a match winner, why has he got the highest number of ODI man of the match and man of the series awards?
Shoaib Akhtar is not a match winner by any standard and is a colossal waste of talent. I don’t want to hear another word about him in the media, he is a nobody.
Sachin best batsman, yes. Rahual has the best defence, and I thought Rahual was better then Sachin. But thats my opinion, and I had this opinion ten years ago, Shoaib has his . It is if no one can say anything about Sachin, he is only human. I personaly think Shoaib has a point, I all so thought Sachin could not cross the finishing line, so many times.Check how many times Sachin scored a hundred, and India lost. Look at his record and do the sums, I could be wrong. After all Shoaib has to sell his book.
if india needs Sachin to make a record in cricket which no one can break then now its time when BCCI should be calling kenya, bangaldesh and zimbawe’s team to play in India. [full respect to tendualkar as he is considered to be the best batsman ever in cricket history]
SACHIN is the greatest run-getter in the history of cricket and his appetite for runs is still peerless. However, he stands no chance against real match winners like Lara, Inzammam, Beven, Gilchrist or Ponting etc. Even our Yuvraj Singh (though in ODIs) was the better finisher of the game than Sachin. Still salute to the spirit of the man who created milestones for next generations.
Yuvraj bats much lower than sachin so obviously he has a better chance of surviving till the last over. Same goes for Bevan. Lara for all his greatness could never inspire his team to win the World Cup. Ponting and Gilchrist were a part of a team that had the best bowlers in the world. Search for ‘Achievements of Sachin’ and you will understand why people love him.
No doubt Tendulkar is great batsman but often his contribution in matching winning is zero. Whenever he is among centurion, the match goes in lose or vain. During tour in England, he has not only been badly failed but onus of failure lies on Indian batsman. He played lot of matches for India and hence collected lot of experience. BUT on other hand, he is very friendly and honest person. We admire him whole heartedly, but no indian have respect for big Pakistani players.
I have been following cricket for last thirty years. I have never felt entertained or thrilled by Tendulkar’s batting. I always rated Dravid higher in terms of technique and style and I have seen him defend matches and win some. Tendulkar, the accumulator yes, Tendulkar the entertainer no. And, do not forget Cricket needed myths and legends around players to gain the popularity it does in India.
Lastly, its cricket not rocket science, not war, its merely a wooden stick hitting a ball, how difficult that can be? Tendulkar hit the ball with the stick for more than twenty years, give credit to him for that.
when u have a billion people’s expectations on your shoulders i bet you won’t be able to handle the stick forget hitting the ball with it
If Sachin is not a match winner then winning itself is curse !
I thought of this article on cricinfo.com which does agree with Shoaib’s claim regarding both Sachin and Dravid.
Refer to the last question in the article by following the link below:
http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/508403.html
If making runs and scoring centuries would makes Tendulkar a demi-god, why dont we talk about
Alan Border? I think he was a good gutsy player but nobody calls him one of the greatest ever? And
why do people tend to pick Lara/Ponting when it comes to greatness and brilliance? Maybe there’s a
reason…and indeed there ARE reasons.The way Ponting/Lara dominated bowling over their career was
pretty consistent and they never tried to change their style of batting for the sake of
accumulating runs and create own records. In addition to that, ask majority of contemporary players
(barring Indian players…they are always patriotic) and they say Lara has been far more
aggressive, dominant and and undoubtedly the most dreaded batsman of his
generation. Its just not Shoaib, but I have heard other cricketers such as Dravid, Sangakkara,
Strauss, Ian Chappell, Ravi Shastri, Tony Greig, Barry Richards,Waqar (to name a few) saying Lara was
miles ahead of his contemporaries. Shoaib is entitled to his opinion and I’m afraid there ARE people
who agree to what he says. Personally I agree with him too
The only way I can think of resolving this would be by taking the number of matches each of these players was present in and see if the teams won or lost. If the player was in the team and the team won, that innings for that player was a match winning inning. Even if he went out on 0. Anything else would be far too subjective an understanding of the case at hand, in which case you’re welcome to your conclusions.
Else apart, it would tell you who’s won more matches when in the team at least between these two. For example, if Sachin has been in more winning matches than Akhtar, he comes out as a greater match winning player versus him, no matter how many wickets Akhtar took “in that one match on that one date.”
Aside from that, it’s the sort of thing I’d say about someone who’s good but I want to discredit anyway.
I think I agree with Shoiab. To start with Sachin was a carefree batsman but later on he cut down on his shots (I think Gavaskar influenced him) and became a run collecting machine instead of a match winner. As far as tecnique is concerned I think he is an all time great but the problem is in his head. Shoaib is right examples of him wilting under pressure are many. Of the late he has starting getting out in 90s a lot. Does anybody know that his second innings average is far leeser than his first innings. Check it out on cricinfo.com. As far as dravid is concerned, he has saved number of matches for india…but winner…No i don’t think so. Yuvraj, raina, dhoni are the match winners in tru sence
I am a Pakistan Cricket fan
– But what i remember is how Tendulkar put shoaib to pieces in a world semi final match, what i know is that Tendulkar is the best batsmen I have seen ever – and the record puts it straight. Shoaib’s second name is controversy, un-predictability, and also speed. He is is just like a F1- Ferrari that can only run for very short while, makes a lot of noise, gets attention and cost a lot to maintain.
I would rather like to have a Tendulkar then a Shoaib in my team.
Fantastic reply… now thats sportsmans spirit and true admirer of Game….:)