'We won't allow Sachin to settle'

"If you give him breathing space, he'll tease you badly," says Rameez Raja.

Always "fearful" of Sachin Tendulkar's ability to take a match away from them, Pakistan has and continues to centralise its strategy around how not to give him breathing space and to get him out early in his innings.

HT Image

Former Pakistan cricket captain and now television commentator Rameez Raja expressed this view during an interview to The Nation.

"We were fearful of him. The idea at the team meetings, discussed very popularly, was to get him out very early in the innings. Otherwise, if you gave him breathing space, he would tease you very badly. The idea was to put pressure on him early on when he had arrived at the crease, and then to limit and try to frustrate him if he had got settled," Raja said.

"The aim was to basically apply pressure by bowling on the off-stump line, taking a chance once or twice in two-three overs, but not to overdo it because he could smash you if you were trying too many things too soon," he revealed.

"One hoped for the best and always felt the pressure of an India-Pakistan game would get him a little nervous and we would get his scalp. But I believe that's how Pakistan teams have operated, they tried to attack early on and tried to conserve when he had got settled," said the former opener, who played 57 Tests and 198 one-day internationals between 1984 and 1997.