Sachin Tendulkar dedicated more than 20 years to cricket. His hard work and passion for the game gave him the name “God of Cricket”. Former Pakistan captain Shahid Afridi is also the big praiser of Sachin’s game. He even said that the Mumbaikar was the only polished cricketer when he started playing for Pakistan.
The veteran cricketer Tendulkar made his debut in 1989. Sachin grabbed headlines at a very early age. He has played plenty of match-winning innings for India. The batting maestro is counted amongst the likes of Sir Don Bradman, Brian Lara, to name a few.
Afridi also applauds Sachin as the main man of India. He even said that he was the only polished cricketer before the rise of Rahul Dravid and Sourav Ganguly in the team.
“In the early days of my career, Sachin Tendulkar was the only man (in India) who looked like a proper batsman. Then emerged Dravid, then Ganguly, and then came a flood of new guys… who were polished with time. But Sachin – he was always polished. I think he was born polished. He had his own style, grandeur, and class,” Afridi writes in his autobiography.
After seven years of the legendary batsman, his some records standstill and seems difficult to be surpassed by the modern batsman. He has played 200 Test matches and scored 15,921 runs at an average of 53.78. He has scored 18,426 runs in 463 ODIs at an average of 44.83. He has registered 49 ODI centuries and 51 Test centuries. In total, he has recorded 100 international centuries which is still an unbreakable record.
Although he hasn’t played T20 internationals, he has been the part of the T20 League, i.e., Indian Premier League (IPL). He has registered a century in IPL as well. So, Sachin has been a run machine and the most prolific batsman in the cricket world.