Sachin Tendulkar becomes first batsman to score 50 Test centuries

Sachin Tendulkar becomes first batsman to score 50 Test centuries - It was a century that the entire nation was eagerly awaiting from Sachin

Sachin 50th Century

December 19, 2010 – India vs South Africa TEST MATCH
SuperSport Park, Centurion, Centurion Test, Day 4
Sachin Tendulkar 107 not out and played a sublime chanceless innings. This is his 50th Century in Test History. Congratulations to Sachin Tendulkar.

Before this Sachin Tendulkar has broken the world record of highest individual run scorer in ODI. Sachin has scored 200 runs and broke the record of 194 runs jointly held by Pakistan opener Saeed Anwar and Zimbabwe’s Charles Coventry. Sachin Tendulkar was first male cricketer to score double century in ODI. As of now on 19th Dec, 2010. he made his 50th Century in his Test Cricket Career. We gives warm congratulations to Sachin Tendulkar.

Tendulkar still hungry after 50 Test centuries

CENTURION, South Africa — When Sachin Tendulkar started his Test career 21 years ago he was a wide-eyed 16-year-old who had to face up to a world-class Pakistan bowling line-up which included Imran Khan, Wasim Akram, Abdul Qadir and a young Waqar Younis.

He made two half-centuries for India in the four-match series and a star was born.

"It was challenging. I thoroughly enjoyed the tour and learned a lot," he said.

On Sunday, Tendulkar rose to yet another challenge as he tamed the two fast bowlers currently rated as the best new-ball pair in the world, South Africa's Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel, who were aged six and five when Tendulkar first showed that he had the skill and determination to succeed at cricket's highest level.

His innings of 107 not out on the fourth day of the first Test at SuperSport Park was a typically masterly effort, which restored Indian pride after the touring side had been outclassed in the first innings.

It also made him the first player in the history of the game to hit 50 centuries in Test matches. No other batsman has scored more than 39.

Tendulkar, 37, dedicated the innings to his late father, Ramesh.

"It was his birthday yesterday so I dedicate it to him. The first thing I thought of (on reaching the century) was him."

The Indian batting maestro said he was happy but not ecstatic.

"It's nice. I can't say I'm not happy. I'm not . . . I don't know how to express this. I'm happy and it is good that it has come. Hopefully it doesn't stop here."

Tendulkar is far and away the most successful batsman in the game. He has also hit a record 46 centuries in one-day internationals.

He said records on their own were not what drove him.

"I play for the love of the game. If I was chasing records I wouldn't have missed the one-day matches (against New Zealand recently). I have to pace myself carefully and I was not in top physical condition.

"I requested the board to give me a break so I could stay fresh. If I was chasing records I would not have missed those games. It's about producing quality cricket."

India were facing a crushing innings defeat before Tendulkar was joined by captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni in a seventh wicket stand of 172. They are still likely to lose, going into the last day with only two wickets standing and still needing 30 runs to make South Africa bat again.

Asked whether it was especially satisfying to have scored a landmark century when his country really needed him, Tendulkar gave an indication of his philosophy.

"Every time I go out the country needs me," he said.

"If I go out and the score is 200 for two it's not as if it doesn't matter. Every innings I play I go out to score runs. There hasn't been an innings where I've thought, if I get out now it doesn't matter. It's extremely important to have that hunger. The hunger keeps one going and I'm glad that it's still there."

'I apologised for getting Sachin out' - Andy McKay

The Boomtown Rats may have spoken for most when they sang 'Tell Me Why I Don't Like Mondays', but for New Zealand the first day of the week started perfectly. Sachin Tendulkar went to the ninth ball of the morning and by the time the opening hour was up, VVS Laxman and Suresh Raina had joined him back in the pavilion. India's lead was 135 but the situation was salvageable.

Seven hours later, when Brendon McCullum and Gareth Hopkins walked off, the complexion of the match was very different. Rahul Dravid grew in fluency as the day progressed and with MS Dhoni staying true to his attacking instincts en route to 98, New Zealand were pushed into a corner. It will now require a couple of their batsmen to do a Laxman-and-Dravid to get out of this one.

Andy McKay, who took 1 for 120 on debut and looked pretty lively at times, refused to accept that all was lost. "If we can bat in partnerships, play to our strengths and work through tomorrow ... we're obviously looking at it session by session," he said at the end of play. "There's still two days of cricket to go. Our goal is to push deep into the fifth day and see where we go from there. The pitch is pretty flat at the moment, but I'm sure it'll start taking a bit more turn over the next couple of days."

India will still have a pretty hard ball to call on come the fourth morning and McKay suggested that surviving the first session was pivotal to New Zealand's hopes of saving the game. "There's a difference between the new ball and the old ball, particularly the carry through to the keeper," he said. "We're starting to see a little bit more up and down [movement]. Not too much sideways. I feel that the new ball will do a bit more in the morning given that we've had earlier starts. There's a bit more in it for the seam bowlers that first hour. We used those conditions quite well this morning."

McKay was the one to break a few thousand hearts in the day's second over, slanting a quick delivery across Sachin Tendulkar to take the outside edge. "I actually apologised to the crowd at the end of the over," he said with a smile. "I bowled quite well yesterday and I think that warranted me taking the new ball with Chris Martin today. The ball that I got Sachin with, I was looking to bowl pretty quick and put a bit more effort into it. And it paid off. Another couple of wickets would have been great, but to get a player like Sachin Tendulkar as my first wicket is fantastic."

Except for a 71-run hour after lunch when Dravid and Dhoni found the gaps with regularity, New Zealand were seldom sloppy, and the bowlers were again backed up by some exceptional fielding. Dravid said as much later when asked about the rate of scoring. But once the ball went soft and with no recognised second spinner in the New Zealand ranks, India were always in control of the situation.

Though it's his aptitude with the bat that New Zealand need now, McKay insisted that he had enjoyed the tussle with a vaunted batting line-up in alien conditions. "I think I've been lucky with the handful of one-day games I've played," he said. "I've come up against Sehwag and a couple of other big players. I don't think one-day cricket's too far withdrawn from Test cricket, but this is obviously a different grade altogether. To come up against this line-up, while daunting, is also very exciting. I really enjoyed the opportunity today."

Dravid not worried by critics' calls for youth

Rahul Dravid has said he is not worried by the clarion calls for youth that follow each of his failures. All he can do, he said, is to keep scoring runs.

"You do accept that when you are at a certain age and don't do well, people are going to ask questions," Dravid said. "When you are 23 or 24, certain questions are asked of you and when you are 37 or 38, the questions are different. It's part of being a sportsman and you can't complain about it. The only thing to do is to keep scoring runs. As long as the team is backing you, that's all you can ask for."

Dravid will turn 38 in January. His passport has proof of his footprints across the ten countries where he has gathered his 11,943 Test runs (just 10 short of Brian Lara), but his critics choose to fuss over one detail in that document: his age. In the seven games he played this year, prior to the series against New Zealand, he averaged 34.60. He said there was pressure on him, but it was born out of frustration of not contributing to the team's cause rather than from what his critics thought of him. "You accept the pressure and know you have to do well," Dravid said. "I don't think about failure or what people are saying. That's just a part and parcel of being an international cricketer and I have never had any complaints about it."

The way Dravid prepares for a game hasn't changed much over the years; he has just "refined" the process. "There are four or five boxes I need to tick every time [before a game]," he said. "Physical fitness, technical skills, mental preparation, and how I am feeling emotionally and spiritually. Sometimes you get the results, sometimes you don't. That's life, that's sport."

In the last year, Dravid has been dismissed by left-arm seamers six times. Chanaka Welegedara got him out thrice, Doug Bollinger twice, and Mitchell Johnson once. Dravid said he has worked hard at the National Cricket Academy and with Gary Kirsten, India's coach, to iron out the flaw. "It was a bit disappointing and I knew that it was an area I had to work on," he said. "I have put in some time at the NCA and also with Gary to tighten up my lines a little bit. I worked on trying to hit as straight as possible rather than opening my bat-face. I felt that I was opening it up towards the covers too much. It has worked a little bit. This was the only game we saw a left-arm quick [Andy McKay] in this series."

"Our plan was to bowl quite straight to him, and he played those deliveries well," McKay said at the end of the third day in Nagpur. "He waited for us to err off those straight lines, and capitalised on the opportunities. His wagon wheel shows he scored a lot of his runs through cover and midwicket. That's when we missed our lines."

Dravid batted for 573 minutes and faced 396 deliveries for his 191 before holing out off a tired shot. "At any stage in my career, batting for long hours has taken a lot out of me," he said. "But, I guess, I have to bat for a long time to score runs. It would be nice to be re-born as Veeru [Virender Sehwag] one day."

A steady approach has been the hallmark of Dravid's batting over the years and he said he enjoyed building long innings. "That's the way I play," he said. "I like to look at the game not immediately but two or three days ahead, see if I can build a platform, score some big runs, and watch the impact it has as the game progresses."

Early years and personal life

Tendulkar was born in Bombay (now Mumbai). His father, Ramesh Tendulkar, a Marathi novelist, named Tendulkar after his favourite music director, Sachin Dev Burman. Tendulkar's elder brother Ajit encouraged him to play cricket. Tendulkar has two other siblings: a brother Nitin, and sister Savita.

Tendulkar attended Sharadashram Vidyamandir (High School), where he began his cricketing career under the guidance of his coach and mentor, Ramakant Achrekar. During his school days he attended the MRF Pace Foundation to train as a fast bowler, but Australian fast bowler Dennis Lillee, who took a world record 355 Test wickets, was unimpressed, suggesting that Tendulkar focus on his batting instead.

When he was young, Tendulkar would practice for hours on end in the nets. If he became exhausted, Achrekar would put a one-Rupee-coin on the top of the stumps, and the bowler who dismissed Tendulkar would get the coin. If Tendulkar passed the whole session without getting dismissed, the coach would give him the coin. Tendulkar now considers the 13 coins he won then as some of his most prized possessions.

While at school, he developed a reputation as a child prodigy. He had become a common conversation point in Mumbai circles, where there were suggestions already that he would become one of the greats. His season in 1988 was extraordinary, with Tendulkar scoring a century in every innings he played. He was involved in an unbroken 664-run partnership in a Lord Harris Shield inter-school game in 1988 with friend and team mate Vinod Kambli, who would also go on to represent India. The destructive pair reduced one bowler to tears and made the rest of the opposition unwilling to continue the game. Tendulkar scored 326* in this innings and scored over a thousand runs in the tournament. This was a record partnership in any form of cricket until 2006, when it was broken by two under-13 batsmen in a match held at Hyderabad in India.

When he was 14, Indian batting legend Sunil Gavaskar gave him a pair of his own ultra light pads. "It was the greatest source of encouragement for me," he said nearly 20 years later after surpassing Gavaskar's world record of 34 Test centuries. On 24 May 1995,^]Sachin Tendulkar married Anjali, a paediatrician and daughter of Gujarati industrialist Anand Mehta. They have two children, Sara (born 12 October 1997), and Arjun (born 24 September 1999).

Tendulkar sponsors 200 underprivileged children every year through Apnalaya, a Mumbai-based NGO associated with his mother-in-law, Annabel Mehta.

Sachin Tendulkar Records

Every Sachin Tendulkar century now-a-days is making an increment in Sachin Tendulkar cricket records and everyone thinks that it will not be possible for any single player to break all Sachin Tendulkar cricket records simultaneously. We mean to say that may be any bastman can break Tendulkar centuries’ record or Tendulkar batting records, but then he might not be able to break other Sachin Tendulkar cricket records like taking more than 100 One Day international wickets or taking around 150 catches or probably, scoring 100 half centuries or other Sachin Tendulkar cricket records. Currently, Sachin Tendulkar centuries are 42 in Test Cricket. He’s been a prolific Test cricket batsman over the years. Every Sachin Tendulkar century has been outstanding. We are nobody to comment on Tendulkar batting. He has sealed the lips of his critics over the years on innumerous occasions. Whenever, anybody comments on Sachin Tendulkar batting, the world gets to see a Sachin Tendulkar century.

It seems Sachin Tendulkar centuries would cross 50 mark. In One Day internationals, Sachin Tendulkar centuries are 44 in total. Every Sachin Tendulkar century ensures that breaking Sachin Tendulkar cricket records is becoming difficult day-by-day.

Have a look at various Sachin Tendulkar cricket records, Sachin Tendulkar batting records, Sachin Tendulkar century records:

• Highest number of Runs in ODIs
• Sachin Tendulkar centuries are highest by any batsmen in ODIs (44)
• Highest number of Man of the Match awards (56)
• Most Man of the Series (14) awards
• First cricketer to score 10,000 runs and to get passed 16,000 runs.
• Highest number of runs in World Cup matches (1,796 @ 59.87)
• Most number of Man of the Match awards in World Cup matches.
• Most number of ODI fifties
• Most ODIs played
• Only player to be in top 10 of ICC rankings for 10 years.
• Most Test Hundreds – 42
• Only cricketer to receive Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna awards.
• Sachin Tendulkar century has been a unique feature in his debut games of Irani Trophy, Ranji Trophy and Duleep Trophy. No other batsmen have done it yet.
• First overseas player to play for English County Yorkshire .
• Only cricketer to receive Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna, Padma Shri and Arjuna Award.
• Most runs scored in a single calendar year (1894 runs in the year 1998)
• First batsmen to score 50 & 75 international centuries.
• Most number of international runs in all forms of the game. (over 29,000 runs in ODI+Test+T20s)
  Involved in 6 200+ partnerships in One Day Internationals – most by any batsman.
• Most centuries in 1 Calendar year (9 centuries in 1998)
• Sachin Tendulkar batting score has been the highest score by an Indian in One Day Internationals (186*)
• Least number of innings required by Sachin Tendulkar to score 10,000 runs in One Day Internationals (259). Also,
• Sachin Tendulkar batting average is highest among the batsmen with more than 10,000 runs.
• Played in most number of stadiums around the world. (90)
• Most number of successive ODI appearances (185)
• When Sachin Tendulkar centuries reached the mark of 5, he was the youngest to do so. This is still a record.
• Highest score by an Indian captain in a Test innings (217 against New Zealand )
• Highest number of runs scored on foreign soil (over 7,000 runs)
• Most number of Test appearances for India
• First batsman to score 25,000 international runs
• Sachin is the only player to have 150+ ODI wickets and over 15,000 runs
• Only player to have taken 40+ wickets and score 11,000 runs in Test Cricket.

Sachin Tendulkar’s Birthday as world cricket day

Sachin Tendulkar, the great cricket legend was born on 24th April 1973 in Mumbai. Sachin Tendulkar is also called Master Blaster, Little master and Tendliya. Sachin turns 36 this year and still rocking in his game.

Mumbai Indian celebrated Sachin’s birthday and that day in an interview Sachin told that, this is blessings of all that he is still playing cricket so well and he also said that he still feels to be 16 years of age and will love to play cricket more.
Amir Khan, one of the close friends of Sachin wishes him on his Birthday and said he will create history of breaking more records and may he score 100 international centuries.

Many Indian fans are excited about Sachin’s Birthday and they all wish him on his 36th Birthday.

Sachin’s Birthday will be celebrated as world cricket day, said by ICC. Sachin Tendulkar’s great success as a cricketer will be treasured by celebrating this day as world cricket day. This was deserved by our Master Blaster. Celebrating Sachin’s Birthday as world cricket day is the tribute to the player. He also will be awarded the Bharat Ratn award for his great performances for India.

Garfield Sobers, paid tribute to Sachin, saying that “with all his skills he will not give away so easily”.

Sachin Tendulkar is a role model for all the cricketers and he is no doubt a gem who is born in India. Sachin Tendulkar with his double century recently becomes more enthusiastic to play for the coming years.

Tendulkar in all major categories for ICC awards

Sachin Tendulkar leads the nominations for the seventh ICC awards as the only cricketer to have been short-listed in all the three major categories. India opener Virender Sehwag, South Africa's middle-order batsman Hashim Amla and England offspinner Graeme Swann are the other names in the marquee Cricketer of the Year short-list. Swann was a late inclusion to the initial long-list after the ICC overlooked him when they first released the list of contenders for the awards. The awards will be handed out at a ceremony in Bangalore on October 6.

Amla and Sehwag were also nominated for the Test cricketer of the Year award, along with South Africa seamer Dale Steyn. Two Australians - seamer Ryan Harris and allrounder Shane Watson - and South Africa's middle-order batsman AB de Villiers completed the short-list for the ODI award, along with Tendulkar.

Tendulkar was in prolific form during the assessment period - August 24 2009 to August 10 2010 - scoring 1064 runs in 10 Tests, and 914 runs in 17 ODIs, including the first double-century in the history of the format.

Sehwag's inclusion in the Test category came as no surprise after a year during which he topped the run-charts, apart from scoring his runs at an exceptional strike-rate of 97.34.

Ricky Ponting, the Australia captain who was the topODI run-scorer during the assessment period, did not make the cut despite being on both the ODI and Player of the Year short-lists. de Villiers, who topped the ODI averages among players who scored above 700 runs, had four centuries in the 12-month period - second only to Sri Lanka's Tillakaratne Dilshan, who scored five.

Sri Lanka's Mahela Jayawardene won two Twenty20 nominations for his knocks against Zimbabwe and West Indies in the World Twenty20, while Brendon McCullum and Michael Hussey were also short-listed for batting performances. South Africa seamer Ryan McLaren was the only bowler to figure in the list of five.

This year's awards include nine individual prizes and three team awards. For the first time, a "people's choice award" that will be decided by online fan votes has been included. The short-lists were nominated by an independent 25-person academy comprising a host of former players, members of the media, and representatives of the elite panel of umpires and match referees.

The short-lists

Cricketer of the Year: Hashim Amla, Virender Sehwag, Graeme Swann and Sachin Tendulkar

Test Player of the Year: Hashim Amla, Virender Sehwag, Dale Steyn and Sachin Tendulkar

ODI Player of the Year: Ryan Harris, Sachin Tendulkar , AB de Villiers, Shane Watson

Emerging Player of the Year: Umar Akmal, Steven Finn, Angelo Mathews and Tim Paine

Associate and Affiliate Player of the Year: Ryan ten Doeschate (Netherlands), Trent Johnson (Ireland), Kevin O'Brien (Ireland) and Mohammed Shahzad (Afghanistan)

Twenty20 International Performance of the Year: Michael Hussey 60* v Pakistan, Mahela Jayawardene 100 v Zimbabwe, Mahela Jayawardene 98* v West Indies, Ryan McLaren 5-19 v West Indies and Brendon McCullum 116* v Australia.

Women's Cricketer of the Year: Katherine Brunt (England), Shelley Nitschke (Australia), Ellyse Perry (Australia) and Stafanie Taylor (West Indies)

Umpire of the Year: Aleem Dar, Steve Davis, Tony Hill and Simon Taufel

Spirit of Cricket: India, New Zealand, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe

Members of the voting academy

Former players: Ian Healy, Moin Khan, Athar Ali Khan, Shaun Pollock, Bob Willis, Sidath Wettimuny, Kris Srikkanth, Ian Bishop, Jeremy Coney, Mpumelelo Mbangwa and Roland Lefebvre

Media: Jim Maxwell (Australia), Osman Samiuddin (Pakistan), Sayeed Uzzaman (Bangladesh), Neil Manthorp (South Africa), Mike Selvey (England), Ranil Abeynaike (Sri Lanka), Sharda Ugra (India), Fazeer Mohammed (West India), Richard Boock (New Zealand), Enock Muchinjo (Zimbabwe) and Ian Callender (Associate Representative)

Elite panel of ICC referees representative: Roshan Mahanama

Elite panel of ICC umpires representative: Rudi Koertzen

Chairman of ICC cricket committee: Clive Lloyd