Mumbai: Team India and Chennai Super Kings captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni, who has travelled and played along with Sachin Tendulkar for the last five years, is certainly a good judge of the master’s prowess as a batsman. The Mumbai Indians captain dished out his third Man of the Match performance in IPL Season-3 on Thursday evening, handing Dhoni’s side a convincing defeat.
Tendulkar struck eight boundaries and a six in his beautifully paced knock of 72, picking up the first 30 of his runs from 28 balls, the next 20 in 12, and the final 22 runs off his next 12 deliveries. “It is very difficult to stop him. The beauty of his batting is that even in this kind of a format he is not the sort of batsman who plays too many big shots, but plays proper ground strokes. He is very cunning, as he uses the pace of the bowler, and always bats on both sides of the wicket,” Dhoni said.
Dhoni reckons the use of variations and slower deliveries invariably backfires for the bowlers when bowling to the little master. “You can force him to play big shots, and try to entice him. But when somebody like Sachin Tendulkar is batting, you cannot bowl too many slower deliveries, as he can hit those for big sixes too,” the wicketkeeper batsman said.
The 28-year old feels it is a ‘mind game’ for a bowler who comes up against the little master. “It is more often a mind game between a bowler and Sachin Tendulkar. More often than not, it is Tendulkar who wins these battles,” he said during the post-match press conference.
There has been a lot of talk of Tendulkar reconsidering retirement from Twenty20 internationals, especially with the World Twenty20 looming large. Former cricketers and even a few current ones are keen to watch Tendulkar set the Caribbean ablaze next month. However, the Indian captain wants to respect Tendulkar’s decision. “It is his decision and we all have to respect it. He has even made it clear in a news channel that he is not keen on playing. I respect his decision,” Dhoni said.
Tendulkar is just 2 short of 1,000 runs in Twenty20 cricket – his first big milestone in the sport’s newest format, and has the opportunity of getting there against Deccan Chargers on Sunday.
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