The worst Tendulkar arguments

Manu Joseph analyses in Open magazine how the opinion of Indian men on Sachin Tendulkar reveals more about them than about the cricketer.

When they speak of him, usually through pilfered opinions, they reveal fragments of their own fears and private grouses. So when a guy says that Rahul Dravid is a more useful Test player than Sachin, he means to say, ‘I am an ordinary person and I want the ordinary to triumph over the flamboyant, I want hard work to be accorded the same respect as unattainable genius, otherwise what is the whole point of my existence.’ When he says Laxman is more beautiful to watch than Sachin, he is saying, ‘I want you to believe that I am classy, an opera among rock concerts.’ And when he says that Ganguly was a better one-day opener than Sachin, he is saying, ‘I am a Bengali.’

In Wisden Cricketer, Dileep Premachandran looks back at Tendulkar's historic double-century against South Africa in Gwalior last month.