The legendary Indian cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, who recently turned 47-year-old on last Friday (24th April) but didn’t celebrate it due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. On the next day, he revealed his top five favourite all-rounders in world cricket.
Sachin Tendulkar successfully spent international cricket for 24-year-long. During his long international career, India achieved massive success in international cricket, including winning their second ICC Cricket World Cup in 2011 edition.
Tendulkar not only played the most international matches (664 matches), including maintaining the record of Test (200 matches) and ODI cricket (463 matches) too, he is also the leading international run-scorer (34357 runs), including leading Test (15921 runs) and ODI run-scorer (18426 runs).
The right-handed batsman is still the only cricketer to hit 100 centuries in international cricket (51 Test and 49 ODI centuries). Tendulkar was also a very useful bowler who picked up 201 international wickets (46 Test, 154 ODI and only T20I wickets).
Sachin Tendulkar’s first two choices were Kapil Dev and Imran Khan
During the Star Sports’ Cricket Connected show, Tendulkar revealed his top five favourite all-rounders and all were the top-class pace-bowling all-rounders. The former Indian World Cup-winning captain Kapil Dev was his first choice with whom Tendulkar played 106 international matches (32 Tests and 74 ODIs).
Tendulkar said in that show, “I grew up watching the top five all-rounders of the world. I played with one of them which is Kapil Dev.”
Tendulkar’s second choice in his favourite all-rounders’ list was also a World Cup-winning captain. His second choice was none other than the former Pakistan skipper Imran Khan, who is the present Prime Minister of Pakistan.
Tendulkar added, “Second would be when I had gone on to my first tour to Pakistan and played against Imran Khan.”
Sachin Tendulkar’s other three all-rounders choices were non-Asian
Tendulkar’s next three choices were the legendary New Zealand cricketer Sir Richard Hadlee, Caribbean cricketer Malcolm Marshall and English cricketer Sir Ian Botham.
Tendulkar continued, “The third was playing against Sir Richard Hadlee on my second tour to New Zealand. Then in Australia I played against Malcolm Marshall and Ian Botham.”
“So, these are my top five all-rounders whom I grew up watching play and later, had the opportunity to play against them.”