This is the oldest thing I have ever published online. I wrote it in 2007, on a Blogspot page, defending Sachin Tendulkar against the people who had decided he was selfish, or finished, or somehow not a match-winner. I have fixed the grammar and removed the dead links, but I have left the argument almost exactly as the younger version of me made it, because I still mostly agree with him.
The case against Sachin, repeated endlessly back then, came in three parts: that India lost whenever he scored a century, that he cared only about his records, and that he was not a team player. All three are wrong, and the reason is simple. Cricket is a team game, and you cannot blame one man for the failure of ten others.
The Mohali example
Take the second one-day international against Pakistan at Mohali. Tendulkar scored a composed 99 and was out in the 26th over with India at 179 for 2, the run rate close to seven an over. From there, a side with any depth finishes near 340. India managed 321 for 9, because almost everyone after him failed, and then lost the game by a narrow margin. That scorecard was offered, that week, as evidence against Sachin. It was actually evidence against everyone else.
You cannot lose a fifty-over match on one man's innings. He had done his job and walked off with the platform built. What the others did with it was not his mistake, and calling it one only revealed who was keeping score in bad faith.
A soldier is not judged by the weapon he carries or the battles he wins, but by the character with which he fights.
More than a match-winner
People with genuinely dubious credentials would still ask: is Sachin even a match-winner? He is far more than that. For more than a decade he was the hope that held a fragile team together, walking out with a purpose the rest of the order rarely matched. Do not judge him only by the runs. He raised a whole generation of young cricketers who would carry Indian cricket for the next twenty years, and that is a larger kind of winning than any single chase.
The real problem was never his ability. It was our expectation. Every single time he walked out to bat, an entire country expected a hundred. He is, in the end, a human being who has conquered the game more often than anyone had a right to ask. Judging him against perfection and then calling the gap a flaw says far more about us than about him.
Old is gold
If you want one innings, take Sharjah in 1996. Tendulkar's 118 carried India past 300 for the first time in one-day cricket, in a record second-wicket stand with Navjot Sidhu, after he had scored just three runs in two earlier defeats. He played fast bowling and spin with the same ease, then took two wickets with his odd mix of flippers and top-spinners, and India won by 28 runs. That was the whole player in one afternoon.
I will give the last word to the one man who outranks every critic on this subject. Don Bradman watched Tendulkar bat on television and called his wife into the room, because the technique, the compactness, the stroke production, all of it reminded him of how he himself used to play. When Bradman sees himself in you, the argument is over. It was over in 2007, and it is more over now.