Tendulkar is an lbw candidate,
says Andy Roberts

For bowlers the world over, the singular mission has been to find a chink in Sachin Tendulkar's armour. And now, after a rare string of three consecutive failures for the maestro, comes West Indian bowling legend Andy Roberts's statement that there are a few flaws in the master batsman's technique.

"One of the things I have noticed is that he gets behind the ball so much all the time that he is a leg before candidate," Roberts told PTI in an exclusive interview at St. John's, Antigua, while helping out the West Indies fast bowlers at the nets.

"He also doesn't push out [his legs] much. This tour is the most I have seen of Sachin. I have never watched him that close before. He is a good player, but like most players, he has his weaknesses," said the affable Roberts.

"I have noticed a couple of things which I think would be useful if I was bowling at Sachin," said Roberts, with a twinkle in his eyes.

Tendulkar, widely regarded as the greatest batsman of modern era, was dismissed for 0, 0 and 8 in his last three knocks, after scoring a century in the first innings of the second Test.

In four of his five Test innings on this tour, he has been out leg before wicket.

Roberts, widely regarded as the father of modern West Indies fast bowling, also rated Gundappa Vishwanath a better batsman than Sunil Gavaskar on bouncy wickets.

"Sunny was a great player, probably one of the greatest of all-time. But on a bouncy wicket, he had his problems," Roberts said about Gavaskar, who has 13 Test hundreds from 27 Tests against the West Indies, for an aggregate of 2749 runs at a 65-plus average.

"Vishy, in my estimation, was a better player on a bouncy wicket than Sunil. This was also because Vishy was a wristy player," said Roberts.

Inevitably, Roberts was drawn to comment on Vishwanath's unbeaten 97 on a bouncy Madras pitch in the 1974-75 series, a Test which India won handsomely.

"It was a great innings on a bouncy wicket. A lovely innings and he played very, very well. May be, if the match was played two years later, India wouldn't have won the game.

"I was a lot more quicker two years later on," said Roberts. "I was much quicker in Pakistan which we toured after India."

Roberts, like a true thoroughbred, also didn't find much greatness in the present batting line-up of World champions Australia.

"When I look at them, I find a lot of deficiency in today's Australian team. I think a lot of them are suspect against good, sustained short-pitched bowling. They always play on bouncy tracks but they are never good players of true, short-pitched bowling.

"Adam Gilchrist is the most prolific scorer today and is seen as a good player of short-pitched stuff, but it depends on how you are bowling and where you are bowling," said Roberts, who, in his heydays, took the English county cricket by storm.

"One of the things I have always preached is if you are a fast bowler, you are not just going to run in and bowl short. I liked bowling bouncers more than anyone else. But for my bouncers to be effective, the batsman have to be playing on the front foot. Otherwise the bouncers are not effective.

"If you are bowling the bouncer three quarters of the way, he is on his backfoot all the time. Also, if you are a fast bowler, you have got to learn to swing the ball. Whether it is inswing or outswing. Every time, you can't depend on the ball cutting in off the pitch. You have got to swing it, especially if you are a new ball bowler. But the fast bowlers of today are not prepared to pitch it up," said Roberts.

However, Roberts had quite a few good words to say about the two Indian left-arm pacemen Zaheer Khan and Ashish Nehra.

"I think you have two good youngsters. By today's standards, if you are bowling 85 miles per hour, you are considered fairly quick."

He also defended the current West Indian fast bowlers and differed with skipper Carl Hooper who said his bowlers had difficulty in pitching it on the off-stump or outside it.

"I think they are bowling on the pads because a majority of our fast bowlers are delivering from outside the crease. In order to get the ball on to the stumps, they have to angle it in, push it in; so you continue going in with the angle and it appears as if they are bowling on pads," said Roberts.

Mail Cricket Editor