Richards vs. Tendulkar -Tests

[Uppercut]

Tend to agree with that. No one knows how much pain or physical difficulty Tendulkar was in for each of those innings, nor do they know how much pain or physical difficulty any other cricketer was in for any other innings. It's impossible to quantify, it's an area best left alone.

 

[honestbharani]

Plus one thing Sachin is good at and I have seen the selectors publicly acknowledge this earlier, he does not play when he doesn't feel he is good enough to play close enough to his best. In fact, he even played the domestic tourneys in 2006 to prove his fitness before being picked for the ODIs against Sri Lanka... And he has often said that he doesn't compromise on his fitness when playing for his country. I think that is something most others, esp. the Indian players should learn from... The man sets a great example in so many facets of the game.

 

[shankar]

The Netherland tri-series was said to be the moment it reached a point and he could no longer play with it anymore. It was said to have been brought about by a technical flaw that occurred before. I am no doctor but tennis elbow is a degenerative condition - one that gets worse with time - it doesn't just happen out of the blue.

The whole argument re his injury period is that he wasn't at his best therefore in the period of his injury it isn't representative of his ability. While that is true to an extent it will also take into account the whole time this injury affected him - for which he was playing a lot of the time. Since he was playing with it both prior and after his tear you can't simply judge him on when he made the most runs or stop judging him when he didn't, as it becomes unclear, convenient/inconvenient and tedious. In the end, only Sachin knows when he was struggling to even stay on the pitch and when he wasn't.

While the injuries in the period obviously affected him, that's not my main argument regarding the Australia series. The fact is he wasn't able to properly lift the bat until about a couple of weeks prior to the Nagpur match. Even then he was able to have proper nets longer than 3-4 overs only 4 days prior to the match. If you want to claim coming in straightaway after this 3 month layoff with no match/net practice would have had little effect in his performance against the best attack in the world then there's no point arguing further.

Secondly regarding his overall form during the period. It was obvious to anyone watching him that he was in the worst phase of his career. His modus operandi during this period used to be to get the bowlers to bowl to his body and predominantly use the shots on the legside to get runs. Needless to say this worked only on the deadest wickets or against poor attcks. Apart from the glut of big scores in the two tests on the dead-flat tracks at Sydney and Multan his average during the period from the 2003 aus series to the end of 2007 was 30. Even including them it's only 41. Outside of this 4 year period in his career he averages 56.5 over 16 years. Is it coincidental that this period is also when he's had all these injuries?