Indian batting great Sachin Tendulkar has acknowledged former Australian leg-spinner Shane Warnes accolade of placing him at the top of a list of 50 great cricketers, describing it as a very special honour that he would treasure.
Sydney, Sept.3 : Indian batting great Sachin Tendulkar has acknowledged former Australian leg-spinner Shane Warne's accolade of placing him at the top of a list of 50 great cricketers, describing it as a "very special" honour that he would treasure.
"That's special. That's very special. I will absolutely treasure this. I've been around for 18 years and Shane has played against me all that time. It feels wonderful when someone of his stature appreciates your performances," the Sydney Morning Herald quoted Tendulkar as telling The Times after reading Warne's list.
Tendulkar duly returned the compliment.
"Every time I played against Shane, he was always extremely challenging and competitive. He was as good a bowler as I faced. But his greatness was that, even when he was not taking wickets, he was still coming at you all the time. If he hadn't taken a single wicket throughout the day, I still felt I had to focus as much on the last ball as I had on the first few balls of the day. So, I always preferred to be on my toes," he said
Warne has always been an unashamed Tendulkar fan, going into bat for him in a July newspaper column when he felt the Indian great was being written off during the Test series against England.
Warne has rated former captain Steve Waugh 26th in his all-time 50 greatest cricketers, raising some serious eyebrows, by saying that all-rounder Darren Lehmann was a better player than Waugh.
The World Cup winning skipper has also been ranked behind Tasmanian opener David Boon (21) and speedster Brett Lee (24) by Warne in his column for The Times.
About Waugh-- the man who captained the Australian Test team to 15 straight wins in its most successful era in history-- Warne wrote that he was a "match-saver rather than a match-winner" and "there were also times when he struggled against the short ball."
"Mark Taylor handed him a wonderful team," the Sydney Morning Herald quoted Warne, as saying in the column.
Warne's list, a purely personal account based on his experiences, has already started to generate widespread debate in the UK and the sub-continent, the daily reported.
He ranks former Victoria teammates Jamie Siddons and Darren Berry at 50 and 49 on the list, and slots in off-spinner Tim May at number 3-- ahead of big names like South Africa's Allan Donald (33), Pakistan's Waqar Younis (45), Justin Langer (41) and India's Kapil Dev (40).
The placing of Younis, the man with the best strike-rate of any bowler to have taken 200 Test wickets, below the likes of Stephen Harmison (37) has invited the most criticism from readers on The Times website.
ANI