By Daniel Brettig
November 15th 2009 @ 1:22am
Related coverage
Tendulkar calls for more Tests, 20 years after his first
Indian batting maestro Sachin Tendulkar has declared Test cricket the pinnacle of the game and lamented the lack of it played by his team, two decades after his international debut.
November 15 marks 20 years since a 16-year-old youth called Tendulkar made his first Test appearance for India against Pakistan in Karachi, the start of a record-breaking career that has taken him to the summit of batting greatness and made him a demigod on the subcontinent.
He expressed irritation at the BCCI’s schedule for allowing the national side to play only five Tests at home this summer — three against Sri Lanka and two against Bangladesh — with nothing else so far scheduled for 2010.
“We should play more Test cricket for sure,” Tendulkar said in Mumbai.
“It is obviously not great news that we are only playing five Tests this season.
“Ideally for any team to progress you need to play more Test cricket as that is where the real cricket is according to me.
“Test cricket is cricket of the highest level and since it is played across five days at the end of each day it allows you to regroup, re-think, come up with fresh ideas and plan for the next day.
“Sometimes in Twenty20 and ODIs, even before you realise, the match is over.”
Now 36, Tendulkar remains filled with enthusiasm for the game, as was so aptly illustrated during his epic 175 against Australia in a classic limited overs confrontation at Hyderabad during their just-completed series.
His captain MS Dhoni believes Tendulkar can go on until the 2015 World Cup, and while lifting that same trophy in front of his home crowd in 2011 is a priority, Tendulkar did not rule out playing beyond his 40th birthday.
“It would be nice if I can go on that that long (2015) but I don’t want to think that far and concentrate on the next phase,” he said.
“My focus is on the near future. I’ve enjoyed every bit so far and I feel there is cricket left in me and everything is going really well.”
Perhaps Tendulkar’s greatest attribute, besides his prodigious batting skill, is how he has carried the enormous weight of Indian expectation with rare grace.
The nation’s appetite for Tendulkar was quantified by his marathon open media sitting to mark 20 years in international cricket, with a two-hour running time ballooning out to nearly six hours, many of the interviews covering precisely the same ground in several languages.
Through it all he never slipped up, answering each question with respect and care, and never offering anything but the straightest of bats.
Asked how he handled pressure and public interest of such intensity, Tendulkar remarked that it was all he had ever known.
“This is the way I’ve known my life from the age of 14,” he said.
“That is when I started playing my first-class cricket when I was part of Mumbai Ranji Trophy team. But I’m comfortable with it.
“People have appreciated me for what I am so I don’t make any special effort to change.
“Cricket lives in my heart and whenever I’m on a cricket field I enjoy it, and somewhere it’s still a 16-year-old hidden inside who wants to go out and express himself.”
Like this content? Buzz it up!
Free Email updates:
Our daily emails are only sent if there is content for the sport or that author. You can subscribe to multiple daily emails; or get the daily Roar email with all our content in it. We value privacy. More...


![Quick question, which professional footballer faced court last week with the threat of a custodial sentence? An NRL player? BZZZT! Wycliff Palu of the Waratahs.
The player escaped a jail sentence for being caught driving without licence for the second time but will pay a $1000 fine.
What struck me was the media’s treatment of [...] Steve Kaless: Why NRL players must want to play union](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/why-nrl-want-union-wycliff-palu-naqelevuki-th.jpg)
![Despite Australia’s surprise win in Sydney last week, Ricky Ponting must be feeling nervous for the first time since his Test debut in December 1995.
After being hit by West Indies fast bowler Kemar Roach on the arm last month, Ponting has scored only 82 runs in his last five Test innings (2 vs the West [...] Kersi Meher-Homji: It’s time to go for the jugular in Hobart, Punter!](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/australian-cricket-ponting-th.jpg)
![Luca Badoer has become the laughing stock of Formula 1, through no fault of his own. Languishing at the bottom of the timesheets having replaced the injured Felipe Massa, what more were we to expect from a driver who has been out of racing for a decade?
The fault is with Ferrari and their haphazard decision [...] Adrian Musolino: Ferrari pays the price for their arrogance](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/ferrari-pays-price-th.jpg)
![On the 23rd of March 1895, on a grassy clearing in Northern London, a group of women gathered to make history. Few would notice, and even fewer cared. But history it was. A whistle was blown and 22 women played out the first recorded game of women’s football.
For the record, North London won 7-1 [...] Davidde Corran: Women’s football is finally back in business](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/womens-football-bompastor-sauerbrunn-th.jpg)
![According to Wayne Smith, the chief rugby writer for The Australian, Mortlock was not told before the axe fell that he was going to be chopped off from the captaincy of the Wallabies on their 2009 Spring Tour. He had a good idea, though, that this execution was coming.
When the new leadership team for [...] Spiro Zavos: Why Stirling Mortlock lost the Wallaby captaincy](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Why-Stirling-Mortlock-lost-Wallaby-captaincy-th.jpg)
![We often assume media interest is a barometer of a sports’ popularity. If it’s not at the forefront of priorities for newspaper editors and newsroom producers, then it must not be important and entertaining enough to warrant sufficient media and public interest.
But that logic, in my mind, is flawed.
Rather, it’s the media that is dictating [...] Adrian Musolino: The media dictates the popularity of sports in Australia](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/lleyton-hewitt-th.jpg)
![Once again, the Champions League is dominated by English teams. This is all very surprising because by and large English sporting teams stink. They hardly ever have consistent sporting success.
Maybe it’s due to the scarcity of English players in the actual sides. Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester United only had eight English players between [...] David Wiseman: Rename the EPL the Global Premier League](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/rename-epl-gpl-patrice-evra-th.jpg)
![I can’t decide whether Oman coach Claude Le Roy looks like Tom Petty or an aged Joni Mitchell, but there’s no doubting he’s one mightily pissed off dude. And for good reason. Not the fact his valiant Omanis fell victim to another one of Tim Cahill’s get-out-of-jail goals, but because Socceroos team manager Gary Moretti [...] Jesse Fink: Moretti’s truculence jeopardises Australia’s standing in Asia](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Moretti-truculence-jeopardises-Australia-standing-Asia.jpg)
![Up until Wednesday morning, there had been sixteen World Records set at the Beijing Water Cube. This was on the fifth day of swimming. At Athens four years ago, there were eight World Records set in the entire swim event, and five of these were in relays.
The likelihood is that, by the end of the [...] Spiro Zavos: Are performance-enhancing swimsuits the new drugs?](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/olympic-swimmers-th.jpg)
![Each week Andrew Jones will select a list of sports people united by some feature other than competence.
This week it is the correlation of their name with their talents. As always (well, since this column started last week) Jonesy welcomes your alternative line-ups.
My Top 5 Apt Sporting Names
1. Usain Bolt (c) – [...] Andrew Jones: The top 5 apt sporting names](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/bolt-th.jpg)
![I’ve just got back from meeting up with Carl Valeri at his new Serie B club Sassuolo. After a difficult few months late last year, when the president of Grosseto froze him out of the side for refusing to sign a contract extension, things have finally turned around for Valeri.
The Canberra-born midfielder is due to [...] Davidde Corran: An FFA scouting network could be the A-League’s cure](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/socceroos-valeri-th.jpg)
![Round 19 of the A-League is upon us. Commencing tonight with a Queensland derby at Suncorp Stadium, and ending on Australia Day in Melbourne, the round spans just under six weeks – across 2009 and 2010 – with all fixtures played midweek. It’s the most important round of the A-League season.
Why?
It’ll test Australia’s true interest [...] Adrian Musolino: Midweek round 19 a litmus test for the A-League](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/33-or-22-rounds-a-league-ryall-th.jpg)



