The Arrival of a Prodigy: 114 vs Australia, Perth 1992
This was the innings that announced Tendulkar as not just another special talent but as a boy who could one day rule the cricketing world. He hadn't even scored 1000 Test runs, but after the innings, Merv Hughes is reputed to have told Allan Border that "This little pr*ck is going to score more runs than you AB."
This was in 1992, and Perth was the fastest wicket in the world. With wickets falling all around him, the teenaged Tendulkar handled everything the Aussie pacers threw at him with aplomb. As Harsha Bhogle wrote of that innings, "He was square-cutting balls for four that his senior colleagues would have been proud to leave alone." There was that much difference between Tendulkar and the rest of the Indian batsmen.
In what was to become a pattern for his later career, Tendulkar's 114 was 42% of Indian's first innings total, with the next highest score being 43 from No.10 Kiran More. Tendulkar was the youngest batsman in the team, and didn't quite have the weight of the entire line-up on his shoulders as would be the case later. Perhaps that is why he played with such freedom, and consequently such brilliance.
Burying the ghosts of defeat: 117* vs Australia, Sydney 2008; 103* vs England, Chennai 2008
For all the mountains of runs scored, one criticism of Tendulkar had been that he has never 'finished' matches for India, never taken the team through to victory in a tough situation. Those ghosts were laid to rest in 2008.
At the start of the year, he guided India to a victory in the first final of the CB series in what was to be the penultimate match of an acrimonious tour of Australia. That was an important match and chase, and had India lost it, they could well have returned without anything to show for some excellent performances on tour. However, Tendulkar ensured that there were no hiccups with a controlled yet aggressive innings.
The century he scored against England late in the year at Chennai was, however, far more special. The innings in isolation was also a thing of beauty, with Tendulkar seeming in total control from start to finish, but the wider context it was played in meant that this will probably go down as his best hundred ever. Mumbai had been attacked weeks ago, and Mumbai's - indeed India's - favourite hero scripted a fairytale ending. There hasn't been a boy who hasn't picked up a cricket bat in his drawing room and dreamed of guiding India to victory in a tough chase by bringing up his century and the win off the same shot. But there was only one man who could actually translate that dream into reality, and coming as it did after the terror attacks of 26/11, the smiles he put on faces were even more priceless than the runs he scored. The ghosts of 1999 against Pakistan were finally buried and it was another piece of poetic justice that it happened at the same ground.
The conqueror of the impossible: 200* vs South Africa, Gwalior 2010
The thing about genius is, it constantly redefines the boundaries of possibility. It seemed incredible that someone could be so feted, be in the public eye from teenage onwards and yet not have any scandals associated with him. It seemed even more incredible that over a two decades plus career, Tendulkar would have experienced no extended form slumps and that he should have maintained such a high batting standard. But he had done it all so well it almost came to be expected as the norm with Tendulkar. Which is when, he redefined what was expected again with the first ODI double century by a batsman.
He had done it before this too - elevating batsmanship to a plane that only a handful have ever inhabited. In 1998, when Australia toured India and he smashed 155 not out in an innings that Steve Waugh described thus: "...we'd been privileged to have a free, up-close-and-personal lesson in how to pulverize an attack on a turning wicket and make it look like you were playing a knock against your brothers in the backyard." He did it again, against the same opponents in India's greatest Test series win at the same ground three years later, when he hit 126 in the first innings of the third Test, against McGrath, Warne and Gillespie. And then, just to show that the magic never fades, he did it as recently as January 2011, against Dale Steyn and co at their steaming best in Cape Town, hitting 146 and surviving one of the greatest ever spells of fast bowling with Steyn controlling the ball as if it was on a string.
i expected more negative comments but still, as for ur retort if i could i wouldn't be sitting infront of a laptop dear. It doesn't mean i don't have the right to criticize the little master.
