DHAKA: ‘The older the wine the better it gets’ the quote best suited for batting maestro Sachin Tendulkar, who will be celebrating his 41st birthday on Thursday.
He has retired from international cricket and there is hardly anything left which this veteran hadn`t achieved in his illustrious career.
Almost every record has been in his kitty. From being the highest run scorer in both forms of cricket, along with making 100 centuries or even being the first batsman who was given out by a third umpire, the list is endless.
He has received the Arjuna Award, Khel Ratna award, Padma Bhushan and also the Bharat Ratna. Although he still regrets that why he hadn`t won the `Best Junior cricketer Award` inspite of scoring tons of runs back in 1987.
Just when everyone was guessing what`s next for the `Master blaster`, even Sachin himself wasn`t sure about his future plans before deciding to mentor Mumbai Indians for the seventh edition of the Indian Premier League this year. He also bought the Kochi franchise for the upcoming Indian Soccer League, starting this September.
Mumbai Indians youngsters are lucky to get a chance in sharing space with `The University of Cricket`. The players should extract the maximum input from his enormous experience, just like how Arjuna extracted every bit of knowledge from his guru Dronacharya.
At a time when the ghost of spot-fixing is still haunting over Indian cricket, the faith on the game has gone haywire. We need a role model who can do the repairing job and who better than Tendulkar can fit in this role. He has been the perfect brand ambassador of the sport.
His venture in the ISL has once again shown his drive towards promoting all sports in the country. Being a MP in the Rajya Sabha needs Tendulkar to put forward his ideas for welfare of Indian sports culture overall, and he will hope to put in his best efforts to better the system where sports function.
Sachin will look to contribute in a major way towards the ethics of Indian sports as he has done for the last 24 years.
BDST: 1320 HRS, APR 24, 2014
