Open Letter in reply to Kapil Dev - "Thank God Sachin didn't do justice to his talent"

Kapil Dev’s criticism of Sachin and what it means

Dear Kapil Dev,

In a recent event, you said, “Don’t get me wrong, but I think Sachin didn’t do justice to his talent. I always thought he could have done much more than what he did”. I think, not only me, but all Indian cricket lovers would thank god that Sachin didn’t do justice to his talent as per your expectation because then he wouldn’t have been Sachin that the world came to love.

Further, you said Sachin stuck to Bombay Cricket and didn’t apply himself to ruthless International cricket. I am sorry to say that this is most laughable argument that I have heard from any Sachin critic. Sachin modified his game more than any other cricketer did in the span of his cricketing life. He started as an aggressive batsmen and gradually moulded himself to become a run machine and then a run accumulator with changing times.

Expecting Sachin to play like Sehwag is like expecting Wasim Akram to bowl like Waqar Younis. They played at different numbers and fulfilled different requirements of the team. Sehwag definitely changed the way openers played Test Cricket but he never changed his cricket according to changing times.

Maybe if Sehwag had taken a leaf out of his idol’s book and moulded his game at the fag end of his career, we would have seen three or four more years of test cricket from him.

Your other argument, “Sachin didn't know how to score two hundreds and three hundreds”, baffles me. All test cricketers, over these years, together, could garner only 28 test scores above 300 and if Sachin couldn’t do it than he compensated it by making 6 double centuries, standing 6th in the list of most number of double hundreds by a test cricketer. Viv Richards could only score three 200 plus scores with his flamboyant cricket. So how Viv Richards knew to score big and Sachin didn't is beyond my understanding.

You also said, “Had I spent more time with him I would have told him ‘go enjoy yourself, play like Virender Sehwag.” How can you expect a man to enjoy his game without any pressure when he is burdened with the expectations of a billion people whenever he enters stadiums with bat in his hand, is also beyond my understanding.

In the first half of his career, he didn't have the luxury that Sehwag had. Sehwag had full freedom to play his shots as he knew four dependable players were waiting in the pavillion, even if he failed in his audacious stroke making. Sehwag himself confirmed this in a recent interview. On the contrary, Sachin came to bat at number 4 with only Laxman and Ganguly waiting, he did justice to his batting number by accumulating runs with a mix of caution and aggression instead of putting India under pressure by losing his wicket by playing only aggressive cricket. He preferred to do justice to the role given by the team than to prefer to do justice to his talent.

You also said that unlike Richards, Sachin wasn’t ruthless, he was more of a perfect, or rather correct cricketer. Ask the bowlers who were paddle swept, hooked, upper cut and especially to the bowler who got nightmares because of Sachin Tendulkar’s ruthless cricket in ODIs. Maybe he didn’t have the flamboyance of Viv Richards and audacity of Sehwag in test cricket but he certainly held the capacity to display all qualities when he turned up as an opener in the blue jersey for India. Maybe, who knows, if he opened for India in test cricket, he may have turned out to more flamboyant than Richards and more audacious than Sehwag.

Viv Richards may have the flamboyance and Sehwag had the audacity but Sachin was more dependable and knew how to bail out his team from difficult situations. In span of his 200 test matches, his batting average stands at 53.78, which is much better than Viv Richards and Sehwag’s, whose batting average hovered around 50.

Had he emulated Sehwag, India would not have been the test team that we loved between 2001 to 2010. The Indian team would have ended up struggling like it was struggling in your hay days or when you were struggling to break Hadlee’s record of 431 test wickets.

Regards

Sachin and ICT Lover