Sachin Tendulkar - Retirement from ODI Cricket

The Mayans have told, the world would come to a drastic end on December, 2012. Maybe somehow they were wrong. But, in Cricket World, this is surely an end as Sachin Tendulkar has announced his retirement from ODI cricket. This is surely an end to the most intriguing cricket career of Sachin Tendulkar. In his 39 years of life span, he has contributed to cricket for 23 years.

The Living Legend of Cricket

Known as the living legend of Cricket, Sachin Tendulkar has confirmed his retirement from ODI Cricket today. He has officially declared his retirement to BCCI. After gifting the world with his continuous and tremendous performance, he retires from the One-Day format of Cricket. He has been on the ground playing 463 ODI matches while stroking 18,426 runs with his magic bat and scoring 49 centuries, also ensuring all of these are world records. He is the one, who, just after 12 years of his career, has been ranked the second greatest Test batsman of all time behind Don Bradman and the second greatest ODI batsman of all time behind Viv Richards by Wisden Cricketer's Almanack.

Sachin Tendulkar was a part of six consecutive Cricket World Cups and a part of the 2011 Cricket World Cup winning Team India, his first such win. Tendulkar's debut match in 1989 against Pakistan in Gujranwala was not something so special where he scored a duck.

He scored his first half-century in 1994 against New Zealand after playing nine ODI matches, where he was the opening batsman and on the very day, he smashed the ball scoring 82 runs off 49 balls. The Century in ODI Cricket took 79 matches of his career to arive, but from then on, Tendulkar has been scoring centuries all along his career. He has scored a total of 51 centuries in Test matches and 49 centuries in ODI matches, both are world records for highest century scored by a batsman. He scored his 100th international century on 16th March, 2012 at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium in Dhaka against Bangladesh where he scored 114 runs.

Sachin Tendulkar - The Greatest Batsman
This image is from Santabanta.com

"I have decided to retire from the One Day format of the game," he said in a statement. "I feel blessed to have fulfilled the dream of being part of a World Cup winning Indian Team. The preparatory process to defend the World Cup in 2015 should begin early and in right earnest. I would like to wish the team all the very best for the future. I am eternally grateful to all my well wishers for their unconditional support and love over the years."

If his records were to be written down, it would be a very big matter. Some of his amazing remarks are constant centuries against Australia in a Triangular Tournament in Sharjah in 1998, being the highest run-scorer in 2003 World Cup in South Africa, being first batsman in history to complete 34,000 runs in all the formats of cricket on 2012, breaking a 40-year-old barrier by scoring the first double-century in the history of one-day cricket at 36 years and 306 days.

A BCCI statement stated that Sachin Tendulkar had spoken to BCCI president Narayanaswami Srinivasan regarding his retirement. His retirement was announced on the day the Indian selectors picked the teams to play in the upcoming Pakistan tour. Sanjay Jagdale, the BCCI secretary, told reporters that "It was not sudden. He informed us before the selection about his decision. He spoke to me and the president about his decision. Naturally he must have been emotional, I can't say we just spoke on the phone." "What he has expressed is his concern that India has to prepare for the next World Cup," the BCCI's Chief administrative officer Ratnakar Shetty added. "From that point of view, he felt that it was time that he retired."

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