Melbourne, July 09: Former Australia coach John Buchanan hits out at Sachin Tendulkar, asserting that the Indian batting maestro is unfit to play the Twenty20 cricket as he is no longer inventive and fearless.
”History will remember him as a cricketing master. But is he an effective T20 player at this stage of his career? ”In the position he plays, as an opener or No 3, the T20 game requires not only the finesse and skill he has, but also power and domination…an ability to take the bowlers on while being creative,” Buchanan writes in his new book ”The Future of Cricket: The Rise of Twenty20”, ”You have to be inventive, fearless. And I don’t see those qualities as part of Sachin’s make-up at this stage of his career.
Sachin Tendulkar is still a great player, but not in this arena of T20,” he added. Buchanan also slammed former India skipper Sunil Gavaskar referring him to be ”blinkered by bias and tradition”.
Talismanic all-rounder Yuvraj Singh, too, has come in for some harsh criticism as the former Kolkata knight Riders’ coach asserted that the left-handed batsman always tried to emulate another south paw Sourav Ganguly.
”Yuvraj Singh in a sense tries to be a modern-day Ganguly, but I don’t think he has the charisma or the dignity with which Ganguly carries himself,” he writes. Meanwhile, Buchanan has surprisingly holds high praise for former Indian skipper Saurav Ganguly as the Australian compared Ganguly to former Aussie skipper Ian Chappell.
Buchanan, who was sacked from the post of caoch of KKR following teams poor performance in the second season of the Indian Premier League (IPL), has also criticised off-spinner Harbhajan Singh in his new book.
”Harbhajan is good at dishing out treatment, lighting the fire and then finding an appropriate means to camouflage his actions.” Writing about the Andrew Symonds-Harbhajan Singh incident, Buchanan said ”Harbhajan dished it out, but when it came to his turn… he was not able to receive it back so well.”
—–Agencies