Furball
Evil Scotsman
Please note, before another thread gets ruined, this isn't a "Hobbs was better, no Tendulkar was better, nah, Bevan was better than both" thread.
I am comparing Tendulkar to Hobbs because of the similarities in their records: Hobbs holding the record for the most First Class hundreds (199) and runs (61,760), Tendulkar most international hundreds (93), and runs (31,055).
Both are/were sublime artists in their stroke play, and both seem to have gotten better with age: Hobbs scored half of his hundreds after his 40th birthday: Tendulkar's rich form since the 2007 World Cup is as good as his late 90s peak.
Wisden's obituary has this to say of Hobbs: "His career was divided into two periods, each different from the other in style and tempo. Before the war of 1914-1918 he was Trumperesque, quick to the attack on springing feet, strokes all over the field, killing but never brutal, all executed at the wrists, after the preliminary getting together of the general muscular motive power.
When cricket was resumed in 1919, Hobbs, who served in the Royal Flying Corps as an Air Mechanic after a short spell in a munition factory, was heading towards his thirty-seventh birthday, and a man was regarded as a cricket veteran in 1919 if he was nearing the forties. Hobbs entering his second period, dispensed with some of the daring punitive strokes of his youthful raptures. He ripened into a classic. His style became as serenely poised as any ever witnessed on a cricket field, approached only by Hammond.
He scored centuries effortlessly now; we hardly noted the making of them."
The same could also be said of Tendulkar, who has mellowed from the destroyer of Warne in 1998, yet is still as beautifully effective as ever.
I am comparing Tendulkar to Hobbs because of the similarities in their records: Hobbs holding the record for the most First Class hundreds (199) and runs (61,760), Tendulkar most international hundreds (93), and runs (31,055).
Both are/were sublime artists in their stroke play, and both seem to have gotten better with age: Hobbs scored half of his hundreds after his 40th birthday: Tendulkar's rich form since the 2007 World Cup is as good as his late 90s peak.
Wisden's obituary has this to say of Hobbs: "His career was divided into two periods, each different from the other in style and tempo. Before the war of 1914-1918 he was Trumperesque, quick to the attack on springing feet, strokes all over the field, killing but never brutal, all executed at the wrists, after the preliminary getting together of the general muscular motive power.
When cricket was resumed in 1919, Hobbs, who served in the Royal Flying Corps as an Air Mechanic after a short spell in a munition factory, was heading towards his thirty-seventh birthday, and a man was regarded as a cricket veteran in 1919 if he was nearing the forties. Hobbs entering his second period, dispensed with some of the daring punitive strokes of his youthful raptures. He ripened into a classic. His style became as serenely poised as any ever witnessed on a cricket field, approached only by Hammond.
He scored centuries effortlessly now; we hardly noted the making of them."
The same could also be said of Tendulkar, who has mellowed from the destroyer of Warne in 1998, yet is still as beautifully effective as ever.