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Sachin is the greatest: Akram
Published on Sun, Apr 23, 2006 at 22:53, Updated on Mon, Apr 24, 2006 at 10:19 in 
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New Delhi: This Monday, Sachin Tendulkar will be all of 33 years. Most cricketers can have nine lives and still wouldn't go beyond the foothills of his achievements. Yet, there is a call for his head. The Gulliver of our times is being held down by the Lilliputs.
Liberate him and you would still enjoy the genius of this man who has been one of the greatest cricketers ever to walk on this earth.
I have no time for all these tales coming out of India. Tendulkar is finished; he can't face up to short-pitched bowling; he is being "carried" in the team; he should choose between two forms of the game; his injured frame is somehow being held together and horror of horrors, the time has come to look beyond him. From being toast of the nation for a decade and a half, it would now appear as if he stands between the team and the golden future. Shame on all!
I sometimes wonder if all this affects Tendulkar. Beyond the profile of equanimity in public, he is after-all a human and it must hurt.
But I am equally certain that he would use this wave of cricketing bigotry to rise and inundate the ignorants. It usually stirs champions to life. It always did to me; I would swear under the breath -- and sometimes audibly -- to spark myself to life. So those who are writing off Tendulkar, must do it at their own peril. They shouldn't have any qualms in eating their own words.
Tendulkar has clearly been one of the three best batsmen I have ever seen on a cricket field. I would rate him along with Viv Richards and Sunny Gavaskar as the "unbowlable" batsmen of my era.
I remember there was a time when I would put my ability to question only because Gavaskar was still not in my bag. Finally I had him in Hyderabad -- caught in the second slip! The memory of it is still so refreshing. With Tendulkar too we always went to the field thinking if we get him, we would be through. And so it was most of the times! I would even rate Tendulkar as better than Brian Lara.
The world can swoon over the records and mercurial ability of the West Indian but for me Tendulkar brings infinite value to the dressing room. You judge a man by the respect he gets within his own set of men. Tendulkar is beyond reproach on this issue; Lara would only set the tongues wagging. Too much is being made of his injuries. It is not unnatural for a long-serving sportsman to fall foul with fitness. I too was beset with scores of injuries in my career; if it was not groin, then hamstring; if it wasn't shoulder, then knees. But I kept rousing myself from the surgeon's table and doing my stuff on the field. Tendulkar would do likewise.
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