An unforgettable 74
India closed in on victory in the second Test in Mumbai but the story of the day was a delightful 74
16-Nov-2013
"Tendulkar was the closest to batting perfection," says Gavaskar • BCCI
He was on a waltz that held the swell and ebb of a million pumping hearts, writes Shankarshan Thakur in the Kolkata Telegraph.
Sachin perished to his first and only blemish. His last step was a hop on the backfoot, arms outstretched in unison, patting down a ball that had rebelled off the wicket. It sneaked past that choreography and snorted on to take Darren Sammy down in an ugly heap at slips; the swan of the cricket crease had been snapped mid-posture. And then the singing ceased in the stands, the heartbeat died on its high. Silence.
In the same paper Mudar Patherya writes about the lessons he learnt from Tendulkar
That in a fast-paced world you can get by with slow-paced values. Unbribable. Not swear. Not booked for drunken driving. Not caught two-timing. Be a Sixties man in a Googling world. Almost expect him to wear his trousers rolled and write people's names ending with "Esquire".
Tendulkar was the closest to batting perfection, says Sunil Gavaskar in an interview to the Hindu's Vijay Lokapally.
When he played the punch off the back-foot through cover! That was the sign for me that everything was going right with his batting. When he played the punch to cover early, he would often go on to get a substantial score.
It was as if Tendulkar wasn't even aware of the goings on around him, writes R Kaushik in the Independent.
In the comfort of an air-conditioned box in the grandstand, Anjali, his wife, watched every single ball, a silent prayer of thanksgiving on the odd occasion when he played and missed merely interspersing prolonged moments of controlled delight when the ball sped across the outfield and peppered the boundary boards. His mother, who made it to a cricket ground for a second day in a row, watched on stoically - no one will ever wonder where Tendulkar got his equanimity from.
In tennis.com Steve Tignor draws on the similarities between the calls for retirement that Tendulkar and Roger Federer have recently endured.
… even if we want to remember our heroes when they were at their best, the most memorable men's retirements were the ones that didn't come early. Jimmy Connors and Andre Agassi hung around until they were 39 and 36, respectively, and the sport will always be better for it. We saw them make it look easy in their primes, but it was even more rewarding to see them ignore their bodies and their limits and summon their best when they were over the hill.