LONDON: Cricket Bible Wisden has devoted special space to Sachin Tendulkar in its latest issue, eulogising the Indian batting genius for being "miles ahead" of his contemporaries and continuing to "write an elegant, belligerent and unprecedented history".

"Sachin is now 30. But to the world, and to India in particular, he is still a boy wonder," Wisden Cricketers' Almanack 2003 said in its separate write up on Tendulkar - "Batting for a Billion".

"Thirteen years and 105 Tests have passed since he first took guard at Karachi in November 1989, but the poet's son with the almost-falsetto voice and the supremely dignified manner continues to write an elegant, belligerent and unprecedented history," Rohit Brijnath said in the article.

The write-up says though Tendulkar cannot be the greatest batsman ever in history, "in Tests and one-dayers together, the reality of international cricket today, Tendulkar will take some catching too".

"Tendulkar will never be the greatest batsman in history; that seat is taken. But as much as Donald Bradman's Test average (99.94) outstrips Tendulkar's (57.58), the gap diminishes substantially when other factors are taken into account.

"Tendulkar travels more in a year than Bradman did in a decade; he has had to manage the varying conditions of 49 Test grounds, to Bradman's ten; he has already played twice as many Tests as Bradman, and over 300 one-day games, nearly all of them under the unrelenting scrutiny of television. And whereas Bradman had to cope with the expectations of a small populace, not given to idolatry, in an age of restraint, Tendulkar must play God to one billion expectant worshippers."

Courtesy: www.timesofindia.com, May 01, 2003

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