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.”
Get Australia's best Cricket opinion emailed daily.
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...
