‘Seniors not out to prove point’

Sachin Tendulkar said he is not playing cricket to prove anything to anybody but because of the sheer love of the game and he is still enjoying the game, reports Atreyo Mukhopadhyay.

The drizzle on a laid back Sunday morning failed to wet Sachin Tendulkar’s relaxed mood. Having proved a day earlier that T20 isn’t necessarily a young man’s game and that smarta and age are not synonyms, the master of many seasons reiterated what players of his generation have been saying for a while.

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“Rahul (Dravid) and I don’t have to prove anything anymore. Whatever we had to prove, we have done over the years,” he said at the launch of a cricket gaming website. “A lot of people say that we seniors are out to prove a point, but it’s not that way.” So why doesn’t he make himself available for T20 fulltime? “I withdrew from the last T20 World Cup (in 2007) because I felt I wasn’t 100 per cent. Now that our team has settled down, I don’t want to disturb the combination,” said the man who at 36 looks as chirpy on the field as any youngster and performs better than most of them.

There was a reference to his and Dravid’s stellar shows a day earlier and a question whether their superior technique stood them in better stead in this format. Tendulkar reverse-swept the quer: “T20 is not about technique. The bowler isn’t trying to get you out and is happy conceding five per over. So, innovation matters more than technique.”