Sir — At last, the much-awaited and much-delayed announcement by Sachin Tendulkar of his retirement from Test cricket has come, with a rider that he will retire after playing his 200th Test innings. There are greats in various fields, but few have maintained the balance, hunger, sense of commitment and dedication for long periods and received such acclaim as Tendulkar did.
In an otherwise unblemished career, both on and off the field, the sore note was his prolonging unduly his career to the extent that he had to be literally advised to call it a day.
I would have loved to remember him as the one who used to walk down the pitch and loft Shane Warne for sixes and his back to back centuries at Sharjah, rather than his middle stump going for a tumble at alarming regularity in the last couple of years. How I wished he had retired more gracefully at his peak, like Sunil Gavaskar, Kapil Dev, VVS laxman, Anil Kumble and Rahul Dravid did. But all this does not eclipse his unmatched performances and sterling contribution to cricket.