Inzamam-ul-Haq is still in awe of Sachin Tendulkar as he believes that the great man shouldn’t have retired when he did and also gave four reasons why there has never been a cricketer like Tendulkar.
Sachin Tendulkar played international cricket for 24 years and saw all the ups and downs a cricketer could see in his career. He scored the most amount of runs in both the formats that existed during his time.
Former Pakistan captain Inzamam-ul-Haq, who played a lot of cricket against Tendulkar, said in his YouTube video that the Mumbaikar shouldn’t have retired in 2013 and should have played for a few more years.
“He was born for cricket. I always believed cricket and he were made for each other. I’m talking about the ever great Sachin Tendulkar,” he said.
He also gave out four reasons why there is only one Sachin Tendulkar. The first according to him is the way he handled pacers at the age of 16 was unbelievable and difficult to match for any other player.
“It still amazes that at a tender age of 16-17, he made his international debut and did such great things. This is only possible by some extraordinary cricketer, in fact, if there is anything above extraordinary then that is Sachin. It’s easier said than done. He was playing against the likes of Waqar and Wasim on his debut at 16 years of age. The kind of cricket he played against that bowling attack was startling,” Inzamam said.
The second ability of Tendulkar that made him great according to Inzamam was the number of records he broke in his career.
“The second biggest quality I believe was his records. During that era, the concept of scoring this many runs wasn’t even there. The great players used to be finished with 8-8.5 thousand runs. Only Sunil Gavaskar had scored 10 thousand runs and it seemed that record will never be broken. But Sachin broke all records of scoring runs. Now I’m waiting to see who will break Sachin’s mountain of runs.”
Considered as ‘God’ by a lot of fans all over the world, Tendulkar always had millions of fans expecting a mountain of runs from him every time he went out to bat. He had to be mentally tough to not be overburdened by those expectations and play to his potential. That is the third ability he possessed.
He said, “He was mentally so so tough. I’m saying this because when Sachin used to come out to bat, he was always under pressure. I have never seen more fan following of a cricketer than Sachin’s. He had fans all around the world. There was pressure on him to score in every innings.”
The fourth ability of Sachin Tendulkar was that he could bowl a variety of leg-spin, off-spin, and medium pace. Even Shane Warne once said that Tendulkar could bowl better leggies than him and his googlies were almost unreadable. Inzamam has mentioned that too.
“He was such a genius cricketer that he could bowl leg-spin, off-spin, medium pace. I had faced many great leg-spinners, never had troubles in reading their googlies but it was only Tendulkar who gave me troubles and got me out many times. I don’t think there has been a player like Tendulkar in cricket, maybe someone in the future who will score this many runs,” the 49-year-old said.
