Martin Crowe believes age is fast catching-up with Tendulkar - Cricket News Update
Amidst speculations from cricket pundits and fans over the immediate future of http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Martin-David-Crowe-c74854, the Kiwi legendery batsman, suggests that the recent slump in form of the veteran batsman is owing to the ageing process, which is ‘slowing him’
down.
Tendulkar, the greatest batsman of the modern era, is under growing criticism given his recent form in Test cricket. In the recently concluded Test series against New Zealand, he was thrice dismissed in a similar fashion, bowled, prompting questions over
his utility as a quality batsman.
While Crowe feels that the world’s leading batsman would remain as an integral part of the Indian team, his body has become an impediment for his footwork which is letting him down.
"Hand-eye reaction is not Tendulkar's problem. But the one thing that he can't escape from is that the body is naturally slowing down," said the former Kiwi skipper, who scored 5444 runs in 77 Tests.
Early this year, Tendulkar became the only batsman in the history of the game to score 100 international centuries. The right-handed batsman has scored 15533 runs (at 55.08) in 190 Tests and 18426 runs (at 44.83) in 463 ODIs since making his debut as a 16-year-old
in 1989 against http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Pakistan-c755.
In the last 15 months, Tendulkar has only averaged 35.04 in 13 Test matches and has failed to add added a century in his tally of 51 Test hundreds. During this period, http://www.senore.com/Cricket/India-c750 suffered two humiliating whitewashes and also lost its top spot as the number one
Test side.
Crowe, writing for ESPNcricinfo, further added that the legendary batsman is not getting any younger and injuries have also added to batting woes.
“It is against fast bowling that his feet and body will find it increasingly hard to move quickly enough into position," Crowe wrote in his column.
However, the former http://www.senore.com/Cricket/New-Zealand-c754 skipper said that the ‘Little Master’ has lasted longer than any other cricketer in the modern era and his hunger for run hasn’t diminished.
"The hunger to continue to score runs for India, the desire to train just as hard as he used to, the mental toughness to put the unprecedented expectations aside – they are all phenomenal attributes," he added.
The 49-year-old further added that despite the batsman going through a lean patch, he has the mental toughness and experience to overcome any technical issues in his batting.
“He can fix it. He can get up onto his toes more and he can start to move his back foot fractionally up and down to get it activated," Crowe concluded.
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