Not sure what he has to do with this discussion but Kallis properly started playing in 1997.
And.... ? Is anybody disputing that?
His legacy will be tarnished, yes, which will be a great travesty because he doesn't deserve to be remembered as a great batsman who unfortunately played on well past his best and was made to look ordinary towards the end. For me it's one of the sadder aspects of sport when this does happen and most great sportsmen ideally want to go out on top of their game.
They are effectively one in the same champ. If his performances decline, his average will drop. It's not complicated.
they are obviously related, but they're still different reasons. there's a reason i said it 'sounds' ridiculous.
Surely the 22 years of scoring at 57 would give him something over the NZ cricketer. With Sachin you can never say never. People wrote him of in 2006. Yes this patch is worse than his earlier one but it has only been since the NZ series that he has looked gone. He will surely believe that it is a matter of one good knock. He played one first class match before this series and promptly scored a century. This does not tarnish his record. It happened and he is trying to fight against it, good on him. He has no obligation to retire.
To an extent, yes. although I thought Ponting did really well to face up to the realisation that he was no longer at the peak of his powers. In a perfect world, Ponting should have retired after this series against India 12 months ago. But of course that's with the benefit of hindsight.
As long as a player contributes he shoud stay!
Some of you guys seriously need to face facts. I know he's been an ATG player, but he's not superman. He's 5 months shy of 40 years old. Do you think he might suddenly have another golden run against between the ages of 40 and 41 (or maybe between 41-42)?
Again, let's conveniently ignore the fact that in 10 tests in the last 12 months he's averaged 27. 27 is not 40 and averaging 27 certainly doesn't add value to the team. But once again, that's probably acceptable to you because he used to be great right?
yea thats true. 3 innings against NZ & 6 innings against ENG is long enough for a 40 yo.
noooooooooo
Couple of things:
2. Here is the main point, you are missing just how quickly Sachin fell away. His 2012 has been awful, but if you asked anyone in the Melbourne and Sydney tests 2011/2012 who the best batsman for India was, they would say Tendulkar hands down.
Yeah exactly, can't stress this enough. He was the world's best batsman in 2010 (1568 runs @ 78 with 7 tons), Indian's best batsman barring Dravid in 2011 despite being merely 'good' (756 runs @ 47.25).
Actually If you looked who I quoted when I typed that, you'll see I was replying to Cruxdude who was actually implying that he may well be back to his best i.e. references about how people wrote him off in 2008.