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Sachin Tendulkar had the technique capable of handling everything: Brian Lara heaps praise on the Little Master


West Indies legend Brian Lara was recently asked in a conversation with Fox Sports about the best bowlers and batters he has faced during his time as an active cricketer and he reserved praise for none other than Indian icon Sachin Tendulkar.

“Definitely Sachin Tendulkar and that’s not taking anything away from pre-Sachin time in Indian batting because obviously they had Sunil Gavaskar and Mohammad Azharuddin. But when you are talking about an Indian player in India, there are a number of them who are going to score a lot of runs against you. When the Indian batsmen left India, there were few who would survive and acclimatize the conditions in Australia or the Caribbean. That was the first thing I saw with Sachin. It doesn’t matter where you took him, it doesn’t matter the pace of the bowler or the amount of spin that he is getting. He had the technique capable of handling everything”, the Caribbean cricket legend said.

“I think the Indian public also recognized that. They had this one man right, that would stand up in every condition. I think it was his first Test match against Pakistan, very early in his career. It was in his first, where he actually got hit, I think from a short delivery, not sure if it was Waqar or Wasim or Shoaib, but he got up, dust his pants, he was bleeding as well and he stood up there and batter. That is something not just India batsmen and a lot of batsmen around the world will be scouring to the pavilion to get treatment, you know spend some time back there. I think he showed a lot of guts, obviously his talent, his ability, his technique is something that is picture-perfect. He just blossomed into one of the greatest batsmen of all time, from the age of 16, I think 25 years of international cricket, that is something very special”, he added.

Talking about spinners, Lara would single out Sri Lanka’s Muttiah Muralitharan and Australia’s Shane Warne. “Murali did give me quite a bit of problems. I scored a lot of runs against him but he was a very very tricky spinner. I like to come down the tracks and get to the pitch of the ball so anybody like Anil Kumble, Harbhajan Singh, Saqlain Mushtaq who kept it flat and kept me in my crease sort of frustrated me and those are the ones I least wanted to face.”

On Shane Warne, he said, “I think what made him great was the conditions that he played in at Australia. It’s even conditioned. It was good for fast bowlers early on, it’s great for batsmen in middle of a Test match and of course, the spinners come into their own, 2nd, third, 4trh day on. Shane Warne was just the sort of bowler who was so versatile in any conditions he was playing in. Be it a cold day at Lords in England or at the MCG or maybe down in the Caribbean when sometimes the pitches are pretty good to bat on. I think that he excelled in all conditions and he would definitely be my number 1 spinner that I have ever played against, simply for that fact that mentally, he was stronger than everybody else.”

He also listed the names of Wasim Akram, Glenn McGrath, James Anderson, Ricky Ponting, Adam Gilchrist, Kumar Sangakkara and Carl Hooper as the best players he played with and against.





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