Revealed: Who (i.e. a bowler) troubled Sachin Tendulkar the most ?
Jan 14, 2019 at 12:21 PM
Legendary cricketer Sachin Tendulkar was a scary sight for all the bowlers in his playing days. The Master Blaster handled the likes of Glenn McGrath, Muttiah Muralitharan, Shane Warne, Wasim Akram with utmost ease. However, the only bowler who has tested Sachin Tendulkar to such an extent that the Indian batting icon “didn’t know what to do” while facing him was surprisingly the late South African cricketer Hansie Cronje!
Tendulkar revealed that he always found the former South African skipper hard to deal with.
Once, in an interview with The Guardian, he said: “Honestly. I got out to Hansie more than anyone. When we played South Africa he always got me out more than Donald or Shaun Pollock. It wasn’t that I couldn’t pick him – it’s just that the ball seemed to go straight to a fielder.
Cronje, primarily a middle-order batsman, was very effective with his medium pace taking 43 wickets in 68 Tests and 114 ODI wickets in 188 matches before his shocking fall from grace due to the infamous 2000 match-fixing scandal in which he was the prime accused. He later died in a plane crash.
Tendulkar said that facing Cronje was always a tricky proposition for him as he could pick his deliveries easily but still his shots always went straight to the fielders.
“I was going great guns in Durban one year and played some big shots against Donald and Pollock. Hansie came on and I flicked his first ball straight to leg-slip. I never knew what to do with him,” he said.