Vintage Tendulkar! India Win Series Against South Africa!

Sachin Tendulkar created history today at Gwalior in the second one day international against South Africa. From the very start Sachin played shots all around the ground achieving half century, then century, then one hundred fifty and finally the incredible double century not out. The first time in the history of one day cricket that someone has hit a double ton.

The superlative innings rekindled memories of the ferocious run hungry Tendulkar of the nineties. The focused and obsessively intense batting feats at Sharjah against the Aussies rushed to the mind.

Team India seemed to be in a devastating mood. There was no time to wait. Sehwag fell early to his favorite shot. Dinesh Karthik gave terrific support in fast paced partnership. The power and fury of Pathan and Dhoni was perhaps inspired by the demolition man at the other end. The unbelievable 400 mark was surpassed and a target of 402 set for a plundered South Africa. What followed was inevitable. They did hit an incredible 434 once to beat Australia at home, but today Tendulkar's strokes paralyzed them.

Congratulations to the master blaster. Look at his records--47 test centuries and 46 ODI ones. Century of centuries is bound to come in the near future. I take this opportunity to reaffirm my view that a player who excels in test cricket can excel in any form of cricket and this is always a mistake to drop such players to go for the so called one day specialists. India has been making this mistake time and again. It's okay to groom players, but groom them for cricket and not for money spinning commercial ventures. Even South Africa made a horrible mistake by dropping Hashim Amla in the first ODI as Amla was in devastating form and was the man of the series for the test matches.

Go for cricket and money will follow. Don't go after money and let cricket be a circus.

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