The thing is this was all taken massively out of context - if you actually read what he wrote is was pretty factual - with loads of complementary things about it all.
For thoese of you who don't read the times, this was Athers' column on the topic:
Shoaib Akhtar touches raw nerve in India – again
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/sport/columnists/mikeatherton/article3178453.eceThere was something almost valedictory about the gathering of the great fast bowlers in London last week. Twenty-two men with more than 5,000 wickets between them, whose punishing work jarred their own bones and often shattered those of batsmen, and who, when in full flight, stirred passions like no other, lifting the game into the realms of the extraordinary.
Valedictory because a combination of protective equipment, lifeless pitches, the lure of an easy life in Twenty20 and punishing schedules elsewhere threatens the future of genuinely fast bowling.
Only a handful of quick bowlers playing at present could lay claim to keeping the same company as those who gathered last week, and only two pitches worldwide — Perth and Johannesburg — could truly lay claim to encouraging their survival.
The man who has bowled the fastest recorded ball and the only one ever to reach 100mph in match conditions was absent, creating controversy of a different kind.
Now, Shoaib Akhtar can only dream of the day that he could lay claim to being the fastest man on Earth. He was just that for a short time, even though the first ball actually recorded at more than 100mph, bowled at Cape Town in the 2003 World Cup, was something of an anticlimax, turned away as it was quite casually off his hip by Nick Knight.
Still, in full flow, there was no one in the past two decades who bowled consistently faster than Shoaib. But it was not only wear and tear that limited his career to a pitiful 46 Test matches, rather a predilection for controversy. Drugs, ball tampering, fighting with team-mates and throwing were all as much a part of Shoaib’s career as the thunderbolts he bowled and there is no surprise that he has revisited them in his end-of-career autobiography, entitled Controversially Yours. So far so standard, at least for a retired cricketer looking to generate some publicity.
But it was when Shoaib touched that rawest of nerve ends — Sachin Tendulkar — that things started to turn nasty. Shoaib wrote disparagingly of Tendulkar’s ability to win matches and of how “distinctly uncomfortable” he could become against pace. “We managed to psychologically browbeat him,” Shoaib wrote.
That the criticism fails to stand up to scrutiny is neither here nor there. Anyone who witnessed Tendulkar’s debut against Pakistan in 1989 will know that he was nothing if not brave, and his hundred at Perth in 1992 was a wonderful illustration of his ability to play quick bowling on a quick pitch. Which is not to say that Shoaib did not occasionally rattle him (Tendulkar averages a little more than 40 against Pakistan, which is way down on his career average.) That is what fast bowlers do, which is why they are such a precious resource and why Pakistan remains so important to the world game.
No, it was the reaction that was so telling. Rajiv Shukla, a vice-president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India, demanded an apology, while threats of violence from Shiv Sena, the political party, caused the book launch, scheduled to be held in the Cricket Club of India in Mumbai, to be cancelled. A slight on Sachin had been taken as a slight on India — by a Pakistani of all people.
This extreme sensitivity will be not be lost on those who comment upon Indian cricket and their cricketers. This week I spent some time talking to Graeme Swann in advance of the launch of his autobiography this month (to be serialised in The Times) and I asked him about his prime motivations for beating India.
Having talked to other England players, I expected Swann to say something along the lines that some of India’s players were arrogant and aloof, but instead he pointed to the utter vitriol heaped on him via Twitter from India fans before the series.
Jonathan Agnew, the BBC cricket correspondent, complained of the same phenomenon during the Oval Test match, when he had the temerity to suggest that Rahul Dravid, having been given out, had hit the ball (Dravid later admitted that he did). Agnew received a torrent of racist abuse from those eager to find a scapegoat for their team’s failings.
Michael Vaughan and Nasser Hussain were on the receiving end of so-called India supporters during the summer, Hussain after some tame remarks about the standard of India’s fielding, Vaughan after a more provocative take on HotSpot’s failure to detect a possible edge from V. V. S. Laxman. Experienced campaigners, they shrugged off the criticism, but both were taken aback by the vehemence of it.
Tendulkar has untouchable status in India and the reason goes a little deeper than his excellence accumulated over two decades and more. More than any other modern player save Vivian Richards, Tendulkar’s fortunes are identified with those of his country. His career has coincided almost exactly with the rise of India from economic also-rans to superpower status.
About the time that Tendulkar made his debut, India was in financial turmoil, a balance of payments blowout necessitating an intervention by the International Monetary Fund, a far cry from the boom times enjoyed by the glitterati in Mumbai now. Criticise Tendulkar and you criticise India’s place in the world, as Shoaib found to his cost this week.
As for Tendulkar? He stepped away from the controversy, just as Shoaib had accused him of doing from one of his rapid bouncers. “It is beneath my dignity to respond,” said the Little Master, leaving an army of immature supporters to do it for him.
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Topic: Shoaib Akhtar questions abilities of Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid (Read 5671 times)