India's first sweep of Australia (albeit in a ridiculously small Test series). Surely one to tuck away in the boxes of nostalgia, to feed upon when I'm 70 and have nothing much left to run upon except for grand old memories.
Bangalore belonged to Sachin Tendulkar. The series belonged to Sachin Tendulkar. What a man !
I think the overworked statisticians and overwhelmed juries should just give up on this man. Just proclaim him GOD and close the book on him. Let awards, recognition and felicitation be something for the mortal players of the game to play for from now on.
Sachin was the single most important player in nullifying Australia's daunting first innings scores of 400+ in both Tests. Australia is a team not used to losing a Test match after compiling 400+ in the first innings. But Tendulkar, with a few young guns to aid, helped reverse this trend, twice in a row.
Tendulkar was involved in seven 50+ partnerships in these Two tests, mentoring and inspiring youngsters like Raina, Murali Vijay, Pujara to produce worthwhile contributions to the team score. Sachin's ability to big-brother over a youngster is one of his less analyzed and subtle but important skill. Anyone with 14000 runs at the runners end is sure to overwhelm a rookie taking stance, but it is Sachin's special skill to put the Raina's and Pujara's and Vijay's at ease, protect them, cajole them, challenge them without being overbearing in any way and to effectively help them extract their own best from within.
12 matches, 15 innings, 1270 runs, 6 hundreds, 4 fifties (including a 98), average 97.69. That's how Sachin Tendulkar appears to his opponents this year so far.
With 6 more Tests to go this year (3 against New Zealand at home and 3 at South Africa ), one can only imagine what a monster year this man of 5'6" is going to have in 2010!
As an end note, I jinxed Sehwag too!! First Gambhir and now Sehwag....both had a wonder run of scoring a 50 in an innings in 11 consecutive Tests before falling to my expectant jinx.
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