Friday, 21 October 2011

SACHIN TENDULKAR

Sachin Tendulkar Biography

Sachin Tendulkar has been the most complete batsman of his time, the most prolific runmaker of all time, and arguably the biggest cricket icon the game has ever known. His batting is based on the purest principles: perfect balance, economy of movement, precision in stroke-making, and that intangible quality given only to geniuses: anticipation. If he doesn't have a signature stroke - the upright, back-foot punch comes close - it is because he is equally proficient at each of the full range of orthodox shots (and plenty of improvised ones as well) and can pull them out at will.

There are no apparent weaknesses in Tendulkar's game. He can score all around the wicket, off both front foot and back, can tune his technique to suit every condition, temper his game to suit every situation, and has made runs in all parts of the world in all conditions.

Some of his finest performances have come against Australia, the overwhelmingly dominant team of his era. His century as a 19-year-old on a lightning-fast pitch at the WACA is considered one of the best innings ever to have been played in Australia. A few years later he received the ultimate compliment from the ultimate batsman: Don Bradman confided to his wife that Tendulkar reminded him of himself.

Blessed with the keenest of cricket minds, and armed with a loathing for losing, Tendulkar set about doing what it took to become one of the best batsmen in the world. His greatness was established early: he was only 16 when he made his Test debut. He was hit on the mouth by Waqar Younis but continued to bat, in a blood-soaked shirt. His first Test hundred, a match-saving one at Old Trafford, came when he was 17, and he had 16 Test hundreds before he turned 25. In 2000 he became the first batsman to have scored 50 international hundreds, in 2008 he passed Brian Lara as the leading Test run-scorer, and in the years after, he went past 13,000 Test runs 30,000 international runs, and in 2010 became the first player to score 50 Test centuries.

He currently holds the record for most hundreds in both Tests and ODIs - remarkable, considering he didn't score his first ODI hundred till his 79th match. Incredibly, he retains a divine enthusiasm for the game, and he seems to be untouched by age: at 36 years and 306 days he broke a 40-year-old barrier by scoring the first double-century in one-day cricket. It now seems inevitable that he will become the first cricketer to score 100 international hundreds, which like Bradman's batting average, could be a mark that lasts for ever.

Tendulkar's considerable achievements seem greater still when looked at in the light of the burden of expectations he has had to bear from his adoring but somewhat unreasonable followers, who have been prone to regard anything less than a hundred in each innings as a failure. The aura may have dimmed, if only slightly, as the years on the international circuit have taken their toll on the body, but Tendulkar remains, by a distance, the most worshipped cricketer in the world.

SACHIN TENDULKAR

MS DHONI

Mahendra Singh Dhoni Biography

There was a time when the very idea of an Indian cricketer rivalling Sachin Tendulkar in the popularity stakes bordered on the preposterous. But the advent of Mahendra Singh Dhoni and his meteoric rise through the ranks did just that, with a new generation transfixed by a small-town boy whose personality and background couldn't have been more different from that of Tendulkar.

Few had heard of him as a 23-year-old when he savaged a Pakistan A side in Nairobi. There had been the odd excited whispers from those who watched his big-hitting exploits in Kolkata club cricket, but hardly anyone expected that he would be playing for India within months of that Kenyan safari. In his fifth game, he lashed a matchwinning 148 against Pakistan and later in the year, he clubbed 183 against Sri Lanka. Such was the impact of his strokeplay that a far-from-polished wicketkeeping technique was almost ignored as he was fast-tracked into the Test side.

Within two years of that, he was leading an inexperienced team to glory in the inaugural World Twenty20, and winning the last tri-series to be held in Australia. When Anil Kumble handed over the Test reins in 2008, he celebrated with a home victory against Australia. And in 2011 came the biggest triumph of all, the World Cup, on the back of an exceptional batting performance in the final and bold leadership throughout from Dhoni. Apart from wins in world tournaments, his leadership also oversaw India's rise to the pinnacle of the Test ladder, and a massively successful three years for the Chennai Super Kings franchise that did well in each of the first three seasons of the IPL before winning the event in 2010, and going a step further to claim the Champions League in the same year.

Off the field, his Samson mane and fondness for fast bikes marked him down as Mr Cool, and though the haircut eventually became short-back-and-sides, the cool quotient never wavered. He was seldom flustered on the field either, batting and leading the side with poise and assuredness. Not for him the sustained harangue or the bloody oath.

He fine-tuned his game too, becoming a safe keeper and a batsman capable of shifting through the gears as he pleased. Sometimes discomfited by the short ball, he compensated with astonishing power in his preferred hitting zones. The scythe over midwicket, even to yorker-length deliveries, drove bowlers to distraction, and his mastery of the 50-over game is revealed by a batting average that remains over 50 after more than 150 games.

He remains the advertiser's dream and a poster boy for modern-day India, but off the field, Dhoni has seldom courted attention or publicity. Even his wedding was a low-key family affair, and he remains content to make the big statements where they need to be made, out on the field.

MS DHONI

MS DHONI

MS DHONI

Thursday, 20 October 2011

RAHUL DRAVID

Rahul Dravid Biography

Rahul Dravid is probably one of the last classical Test match batsmen. His progress into the national side may have been steady and methodical rather than meteoric, but once there, Dravid established himself at the vanguard of a new, defiant generation that were no longer easybeats away from home. Armed with an orthodox technique drilled into him by Keki Tarapore, he became the cement that held the foundations firm while the flair players expressed themselves. Yet, for a man quickly stereotyped as one-paced and one-dimensional, he too could stroke the ball around when the mood struck him.

Never a natural athlete, he compensated with sheer hard work and powers of concentration that were almost yogic. At Adelaide in 2003, when India won a Test in Australia for the first time in a generation, he batted 835 minutes over two innings. A few months later, he was at the crease more than 12 hours for the 270 that clinched India's first series win in Pakistan.

Initially seen as a liability in the one-day arena, he retooled his game over the years to become an adept middle-order finisher. The heaves and swipes didn't come naturally, but by the time the selectors eased him aside in early 2008, he had more than 10,000 runs to his name in the 50-over game. There had also been a lengthy phase where he donned the wicketkeeping gloves, helping the team to find a balance that was crucial in the run to the World Cup final in 2003.

However, it's his Test exploits that he will be most remember for. After impressing in a Lord's debut where he was eclipsed by Sourav Ganguly, Dravid's breakthrough innings arrived at the Wanderers a few months later, against a South African attack accustomed to bullying visitors. A brief slump followed, but he emerged from that with perhaps one of the most famous supporting acts of all, to VVS Laxman in an Eden Gardens Test that rejuvenated Indian cricket. The half decade that followed was a golden one with the bat, as tours of England and Australia realised more than 600 runs. A two-year stint as captain, following Ganguly's axing, was less successful, though he did lead the side to series victories in England and the West Indies for the first time in a generation.

Resigning the captaincy didn't free his batting from the shackles immediately, but by the time Sri Lanka arrived in 2009, Dravid had regained the positivity that some thought he had lost forever. By then, he had gone past Mark Waugh to become the most successful slip catcher in history, and grown into his role as senior statesman of a team that was finally keeping pace with the expectation of the teeming multitudes.

Rahul Dravid

SURESH RAINA

Suresh Raina Biography

Suresh Raina represents the new age Indian cricketer. An attacking left-hander who goes for the big shots with impunity and clears the field with a swashbuckling flourish when at the top of his game, Raina is also equally capable of attracting applause as an electric fielder in the circle. All of this, though, is tempered with an iffy technique against the short ball, which has been mercilessly exposed in Test cricket.

It took him five years to cement his place as an India regular, moving from a limited-overs specialist who played 98 ODIs to one who became the 12th Indian to make a Test century on debut. Raina made his Test debut in Sri Lanka as a replacement for injured team-mate Yuvraj Singh, who, like Raina, was a left-hander, a dasher, and in the early 2000s, India's most athletic fielder. For a while it seemed Raina might have earned a long-term Test spot, but in England in 2011 his lack of skill against pace, seam and swing again opened up debates about his ability to be a consistent Test player for India.

In the shorter versions, though, there're no doubts about his talent. The ability to split the field and discover gaps where fielders could not be placed earned him high praise when he first burst through to play for India in December 2006. The early years, however, weren't so prolific, which led to his omission from the 2007 World Cup. He forced his way back with a mountain of runs in domestic cricket, and from June 2008 was prolific in ODIs too, enhancing his stature as one of India's responsible gen-next batsmen. Also helping his cause were three supremely successful seasons for Chennai Super Kings in the IPL and in the Champions League. He was one of the four players retained by the franchise for the 2011 season.

His tenacity at the worst of times is typical of someone who has spent his teenage years living away from home in the demanding world of the Uttar Pradesh sports hostel, where a lack of facilities or grooming produces cricketers who must match talent with determination. At the under-19 level, Raina was prodigious with his run-scoring and a string of double-hundreds took him to the Indian junior team and beyond it, to India colours. For a player of his ability, though, India must hope that Raina's best innings are still to be played.

Suresh Raina

GAUTAM GAMBHIR

Gautam Gambhir Biography
Feisty and firm, capricious and correct, insatiable and insecure, Gautam Gambhir is one of the most complete batsmen of the current era. He is adept at opening in all three forms of the game. He can be more aggressive than Virender Sehwag, he can play the kind of back-to-the-wall innings that would do Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman proud, and he can accumulate without taking any risks, much like Sachin Tendulkar has been doing in the last quarter of his career.
He walks down the track to the fastest of bowlers, and an unfriendly word or three with the fielding side only help him concentrate harder, though it's not as if he needs external motivation to make the most of his time as a cricketer. He almost lost the fight to his own high standards and to the fickle selectors, which left him "not wanting to play anymore" when he was dropped for the 2007 World Cup, and insecure when he did make it back. For about eight first years of his career, he was the domestic cheque that would not be honoured at international level. While the bowlers on the Ranji circuit swore by this little left-hand batsman, he had just two international centuries to show after 13 Tests and 19 ODIs when he was left out of the World Cup party.
He came back with massive runs in domestic cricket, a few important technical adjustments, and with the reputation of being the best player of spin in India, outside the international side. A century in his second ODI back and a final-winning fifty in the inaugural World Twenty20 paved the way for his Test return. Test fifties against Murali and Mendis in the summer of Murali and Mendis in 2008 told him he belonged. In his next 13 Tests, he scored eight centuries: centuries to set up wins, centuries to bat opposition out, and centuries to hold on for draws, including the near 11-hour marathon in Napier. The Arjuna Award came his way, the ICC named him the Test player of 2009, but much more tellingly Sehwag called him the best Indian Test opener since Sunil Gavaskar. The only plausible flaw in Sehwag's claim is Sehwag himself.

Gautam Gambhir