Tendulkar unfit for T20 format: Buchanan by CricketArchive Staff Reporter

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Player:

SR Tendulkar, SC Ganguly, RS Dravid, VVS Laxman

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DateLine: 10th July 2009

 

Former Australia coach John Buchanan said that Sachin Tendulkar is not fit to play the shortest format of the game since the master blaster is neither inventive nor fearless.

 

Buchanan though insisted that there were no question marks over Sachin's greatness in the other two formats.

 

"Tendulkar has been lauded, and rightly so, as one of the very top batsmen in the history of cricket...But is he an effective T20 player at this stage of his career?" asked the former Australia coach in his latest book 'The Future of Cricket: The Rise of Twenty20'.

 

"In the position he plays -- as an opener of No. 3 -- the T20 game requires not only the finesse and skills he has, but also the power and domination, an ability to take the bowlers on while being creative.

 

"You have to be inventive and fearless. And I don't see those qualities as part of Sachin's make-up at this stage of his career. Sachin Tendulkar is still a great player but not in this arena of T20," Buchanan said in the book published by Orient Paperbacks.

 

His comments were not only limited to Tendulkar, rather he went on to say that the performance of a few other senior players also has been "subdued" in this format.

 

"...homegrown heroes such as Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Harbhajan Singh and VVS Laxman...were expected to influence, and on some occasions single-handedly win, IPL matches," Buchanan said.

 

"Yet their subdued performances highlight that Test match temperament does not necessarily ensure prolonged success in the T20 game," Buchanan said.

 

The former coach in fact went on to the extent of saying that the likes of Sourav Ganguly, Dravid and Laxman were unfit for cricket's shortest format.

 

"I was constantly battling with the fact that I believed he (Ganguly) -- along with Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman -- was not suited to T20 cricket," he said.

 

"The same could be said about Rahul Dravid. Dravid is a great representative of Indian cricket, a team man, humble, a well-spoken gentleman.

 

"But unfortunately he could not score a single run in the early rounds of the IPL, and in my opinion, is not suited to this form of the game.I am certain Dravid's performances were also affected by the off-field drama created by his franchise owner Vijay Mallya," he said.