Sachin and Motivation
Most people work to earn money. In fact I used to start my training brochure by saying if
“99% of us work to earn money…why do we not make our money work?”
But Sachin is beyond money. He is just the epitome of concentration and it is his ATTITUDE towards life that is worth singing pageants about. I like many things about Mumbai (6th generation is now in Mumbai) and one of them is Sachin. I am also sick of innumeracy (mathematically challenged people making stupid statements sucks man).
so here it is again loud and clear: Sachin plays for India, and statistically India has won far, far more number of times when he hits a century than India loses.
Now this is of course emotionally correct, mathematically too it is true.
Money, fame, and every thing else (Bharat Ratna will come if not now, later) …hey this guy plays for India to win. In 20 years he has given us UNIMAGINABLE ATTITUDE…Gokul Gopal has taken the trouble to mathematically prove this:
http://www.cricbuzz.com/cricket-news/38170/the-myth-about-sachin-ton-and-india-losing
if Sachin were to play tennis with this kind of a dedication it is likely that he would have had all the titles a few times over. Alas, cricket is what he plays. Ahoy! he played cricket at the peak of my understanding years…Love you Sachin..you are the greatest Maharashtrian since Lokmanya Tilak. Sorry I did consider Sunil Gavaskar, but Sachin is head and shoulders above SG. Sorry SG.
MRaje
Its Rightly said,
But 1 Qus comes to my mind, thats when ever Sachin plays a mindblowing game other teammates stands in the kerosene line?
sanjay
Correlation of century and winning is not important. A comparison of runs made by him and total runs made by other players in same match is important. We have to find how desperately team needed his runs.
It is obvious that openers are going to make most of runs on flat pitch. Scoring century against Bangladesh on Indian pitch is not very important, right?
If he has made significant contribution when team was all-out in one-day or his strike-rate was way better than the run rate then I would say he is important.
Famously said, statistics hide more important things than they reveal.
pravin
sanjay,
that doesnt make much sense at all to try and “find how desperately team needed his runs”. are the openers runs always useless? because numbers 3-11 can always score them?.what about the runs pathan makes -are they always worth its weight in gold because he is invariably forcing the issue?.
cricket is a team game and such data mining is odious.all you need to see is that sachin has more hunger to play cricket than anyone else on earth depsite all the wealth and batting records.that alone should elevate him to a separate plane
Sanjay Singhaniya
Hi Pravin,
I admire your point of view. But cricket is not strongly focused on team spirit.
If you would compare it with football then you will realize it in a better way. In Football, you might have to pass the ball for team spirit. But it is the person who makes the goal gets most of the credit. As against in Cricket, if you make runs, then they are added in your records as well as in team’s records.
So other games need a lot selflessness than Cricket.
I am wondering if similar exercise has been carried out for other players as well. I mean did anybody tried to find correlation between Azaruddin’s centuries and India’s wins? Or Ajay jadeja’s centuries and India’s wins? Or Jawagal Srinath’s five-wicket hauls and India’s wins?
What I am trying to say is if anybody scores a century then India’s chances of winning increases. 🙂 I strongly think the correlation would be much better for other Indian players than Tendulkar. (may be because Tendulkar scores centuries a lot more consistently than other players.)
What we should look for is not volume but correlation. What say Subra?
Sanjay Singhaniya
btw, I am not saying that Sachin is not playing for team. I am just saying that count of matches lost / won is not the right criteria to judge it.
Btw, Sachin is world-class batsman. He has proved himself on every pitch against every bowler. I admire him. But I don’t admire him because of number of matches played. I admire him because of his skills.
There was a time when mere presence of Sachin in the team was morale booster. And it still is when India plays on pitches suitable for seamers.