Showing posts with label Australia tour of india. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Australia tour of india. Show all posts

Sachin Tendulkar Boosted My Confidence: Umesh Yadav

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 India's young bowling sensation Umesh Yadav felt nervous bowling at the likes of Ricky Ponting in his first Test against Australia but said Sachin Tendulkar's advice hugely boosted his confidence as he scalped three crucial wickets on the opening day on Monday. 


Yadav was seen to get a lot of encouragement from Tendulkar at mid-off or mid-on and the young fast bowler said the Indian legend told him to bowl fuller length deliveries to get wickets. 




"Even against West Indies, at mid off or mid-on, he just boosts my confidence. He does not tell me anything particular, just asks me to bowl in my areas. He told me that in India you could get away by bowling back of length stuff. Here in Australia, it's important to bowl a fuller length," Yadav told reporters at the press conference after first day's play. 


Yadav said he was happy to have taken the most wickets for the visitors but was disappointed that he gave away far too many runs. 


"I took wickets but also gave away far too many runs. So I'm happy and I'm not happy as well," said Yadav who took three wickets for 96 runs for his day's effort. 


Yadav was pulled often by Australian batsmen, especially in the post lunch session when both Ponting and opener Ed Cowan had a go at him, and he said he bowled short balls to contain the batsmen. 


"It's not that I wanted to bowl short or the team has planned so. The two fielders in the deep, at fine leg and square leg, were intended to keep the scoring down more than to catch the batsmen off a pull shot," he said. 




One of Yadav's victims was Ponting whom he claimed caught in the slips off an outswinger and he admitted he was a bit nervous initially bowling at the Australian legend. 


"I would not say any one wicket in particular was special. All wickets were special. I am touring Australia for the first time so whatever success comes my way would make me happy. In whatever way I could contribute for the team, I am happy I could do it," Yadav said. 


"It was exciting to bowl to Ponting. He has been such a big player. I wouldn't say I was very nervous but yes there was a little bit of nervousness," he said. 


Yadav said that overall India had a good day in office though Australia put together important 63-runs for the seventh wicket at the fag end of play on Monday. 




"Partnerships happen. We did try to break it but they kept going. Yes, we have conceded a few runs but otherwise the day was good for us," said Yadav.
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Little Master Sachin Tendulkar a Work Of Timeless Art

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GREAT players have a habit of setting records. Only very, very special ones actually invent them. Nobody dreamed of one hundred first-class centuries becoming a landmark until W. G. Grace made it conceivable. Likewise the milestone of one hundred international centuries- that is, until Sachin Tendulkar.


As Tendulkar set to scaling that summit, it seemed to shrink a little in proportion. That's another quality of the very, very special.


They recalibrate the world by their capabilities. Tendulkar is known colloquially as "The Little Master", but he is also a master of littling, of scaling achievements down so that they grow thinkable, permissible and achievable.


Combining five-day and one-day hundreds contains inevitably an inexactitude: it is like adding apples to oranges to obtain a count of fruit. But the century remains batting's most incorruptible unit of currency, with a lasting historic and cultural utility, and a century of centuries at the game's elite level has an undilutable whole-ness, like a round-the-world journey or a perfect smile: complete in itself, theoretically repeatable but essentially unimprovable.




You must factor in the distance travelled since the first, at Old Trafford in August 1990, when he looked so slight and tiny that a puff of wind might have blown him away even though England's attack could not.


You must contemplate how the world has changed since. When first Tendulkar toured this country 20 years ago, there were only seven Test nations (South Africa was excluded at that time), only two umpires per Test, and only home viewers saw replays.


Australia hosting India in a Test series, too, was considered an act of antipodean philanthropy, rather than an opportunity to line the vaults of Jolimont with gold bars as it is now.


So much has changed, and so little, because Tendulkar's game, for all its variations and iterations as years have passed, has remained instantly recognisable in its adherence to cricket's first principles and his unaltering sureness of touch.


You could stop a Tendulkar career showreel at any time and it would look like the acme of batting. Above all, contemplate the scale and intensity of the hopes that have accumulated around Tendulkar in the course of his career, greater than those heaped on any other cricketer in history.


Balzac once said he hankered for a fame that would permit him "to break wind in society, and society would think it a most natural thing". Tendulkar breaking wind in society today would hit India like a monsoon.


It is one thing to become famous; quite another to stay famous, in a world more conducive to the perishable quality of celebrity. It is one thing to succeed; it is another to continually stave off failure and maintain a baseline excellence.


Here, then, is an epic of expertise and endurance, like the Mahabharata and Ramayana rolled into one. Tendulkar has become an exceedingly wealthy man between times, but in a sense because he has had to be - because that is the way aspirational, materialistic societies reward their heroes.


He has continued to understand value in a world obsessed with price, taking nothing not insistently offered, and in the totality of his career he will come out comfortably as a giver who is certain that cricket will be perennially in his debt. What comes after him will not be of the same character. In so altering the financial stakes of his game, in fact, Tendulkar has inadvertently insured it.


In their book The Business of Cricket (2010), Shyam Balasubramanian and Vijay Santhanam cite a table prepared by TAM Sports delineating "the Sachin Factor": that Tests and one-day internationals with Tendulkar playing outrate those in which he does not by a huge degree in 2010, by three to one. They also present a graphic they call "The Tendulkar Ecosystem", in the centre of which sits Sachin, sluicing value, financial and psychic, between Team India, fans, sponsors, media houses and state associations.


It looks, at first glance, exceedingly complex, but its essence is simple - because without one small man who enters his 40th year next April, it cannot work.


Want really to grasp Tendulkar's importance to the modern game? Try to imagine it without him.


The record on the brink of which he stands is in a sense an artefact already. Tendulkar came into his majority as the calendar was being glutted by forms of the game of a duration conducive to the compilation of hundreds.


It is virtually impossible to imagine his heirs and successors emulating him in playing on for approaching a quarter of a century, let alone facing international opponents in more than 600


games of at least a day in length.


Thanks to the ascendant of the Indian Premier League and Champions League, the next generation of cricketers are likely to play far more T20 for "clubs" and less international cricket for their countries.


The shortening of our pleasures has entailed a contraction in cricket's scope. It was always a possibility that there would never be another Tendulkar, but perhaps now there cannot be. He has constructed a career along the lines of one of Europe's great gothic cathedrals, built to last, guaranteed to serve future generations, full of splendour, grandeur, romance. And all cricket can now think of doing is surrounding that cathedral with lookalike apartments and trying to sell them at a huge mark-up.


In writing of the immediate post-Bradman era, Ray Robinson described Australian cricket as like a man bumping around a darkened room. Something similar looms today. Tendulkar is sui generis. To imagine another Tendulkar ranks in audacity with imagining him in the first place.


The effect of the end of Tendulkar's career will be particularly pronounced in cricket's richest and most populous market. Sixty-five per cent of India's population is younger than 35. They can recall no cricket without the Little Master.


When he retires, it will be for them not just the loss of a sporting hero but an intimation of mortality. That is as profound and expressive an idea as any record he may set, even the most remarkable
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Sachin Eyes 100th Ton In Melbourne Test

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Sachin Tendulkar has been stuck on 99 International centuries since March and despite coming close on a fair few occasions he has yet to score that elusive 100th ton. Now all of India hopes that he can recapture his best form when he takes to the field in Melbourne.




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Sachin, Rahul, VVS Expected To Draw Huge Crowds For First Test

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The Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) will have a bumper 75,000 crowd on the opening day of the Boxing Day Test to bid farewell to the famous Indian batting trio of Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and V.V.S. Laxman, who will be playing their last series on Australian soil.


It could also be the last time the Melbourne crowd would see two Australian greats Ricky Ponting and Mike Hussey playing a Test in the 100,000-seat majestic stadium.




Cricket Australia (CA) have sold more than 75,000 tickets for the first day of the four-Test series. Melbourne Cricket Club (MCC) visitors passes have also been sold out for the traditional and iconic post-Christmas sporting event.


CA spokesman Peter Young said they were a little concerned about cricket fans leaving bookings to the last minute.


"Melbourne has got the biggest walk-up rate of any ground in the world. If you want to get good seats, then you should book ahead," Young said.


Young said that CA was expecting stronger-than-normal crowds for the remaining days of the Test with more than 45,000 fans expected for the second day at the MCG.


"They are running stronger than we had originally expected," Young said. "As far as Melbourne is concerned, the city seems to be in love with Test cricket."
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Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag Major Challenges For Australia

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The Australian bowling attack is improving, but success against an in-form Indian outfit featuring Virender Sehwag and Sachin Tendulkar will not come as easily as it has against a disappointing New Zealand.
 With Sehwag joining Tendulkar as the only players to score double centuries in the 50-over format of the game, Australia will face a challenge when the series against India gets underway from December 26 in Melbourne.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the No.3-ranked Test nation could leapfrog South Africa to No.2 with a series win in Australia.

Sehwag's blistering knock of 219 that contained 25 fours and seven sixes, is an indication that the Indians are capable of relegating Australia to another series defeat on home soil.
 Sehwag's knock helped India surpass their previous highest one-day total of 414/7 against Sri Lanka in Rajkot in 2009.

It was his 15th three-figure knock in one-day cricket and the first since making 175 against Bangladesh in the opening match of the World Cup in Dhaka in February.

Sehwag, captaining India in the absence of the rested MS Dhoni, had managed just 46 runs in the previous three matches.

Sehwag also has two triple Test centuries to his credit, one of only four batsmen to achieve the feat.

Other players with two 300s each are Australian legend Don Bradman and the West Indies duo Brian Lara and Chris Gayle.
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