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Sachin to bid goodbye to One-day Cricket ?
Sachin Tendulkar is seriously contemplating retiring from one-day
cricket after India’s home engagements against Pakistan and
Australia later this season, it is reliably learnt.
Tendulkar, one-day cricket’s most prolific and dominant batsman,
will, however, continue playing Tests and will travel to Australia
in December.
Sources close to Tendulkar said he was inclined to announcement his
retirement on this tour but was persuaded by friends to do so at
home. India are scheduled to play seven ODIs against Australia and
five against Pakistan before the end of the year.
Tendulkar had, along with Rahul Dravid and Sourav Ganguly, opted out
of the forthcoming World Twenty20 in South Africa. A couple of days
ago he’d also spoken of the toll one-day cricket was taking on his
body and how it was getting increasingly difficult for him to
recover from that.
His innings at The Oval on Wednesday provided evidence of that; the
last few minutes saw him hobbling, barely able to run the singles
and, after his dismissal, taking a long time to climb the stairs to
the dressing room.
Most of that innings, though, was spent in the kind of form he has
displayed through this tour, one on which he showed he’d lost little
of his formidability in one-day cricket. He began with two 90s
against South Africa in Ireland, helping India win the series from
being one down.
Restored to the top of the order after an indifferent World Cup
where he batted in the middle order, Tendulkar has allowed himself
the freedom to play the strokes of his majestic youth – the majestic
cover drive, the pull and the lofted drive down the ground – and
runs have flowed, both consistently and quickly.
In ten innings in the series so far, he has plundered 548 runs, with
four 90s, at a strike rate of 84.3. The tour also reunited him with
his opening partner Sourav Ganguly, and the pair, the most prolific
in the history of one-day cricket, added four more century
partnerships to take their tally to 25, 16 of them for the first
wicket.
Tendulkar is 34 but already has 18 years of international cricket
behind him; his 140 Tests and 394 ODIs have fetched him more than
25,000 runs, the most in international cricket.
He has before him the example of Shane Warne, who gave up one-day
cricket in the last quarter of his career to help him play more
Tests.
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