According to me Viswanathan Anand , Indian Chess Player is the greatest sportsman of India not sachin Tendulkar. WOW! It takes a great leap of faith, and probably logic, for an Indian and non-Indian sport-persons alike to accept that proposition. I made a research about Sachin Tendulkar, and the result is that he is a cricket player in India, and cricket as the favorite sport in the country. But what is cricket anyway? It is not even a popular sport in Asian continent, much less in the world. It is only played in India and neighboring countries of Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, and other few countries. In Asia, 80% of its more than 40 countries do not even know cricket. The sports power countries of US, Russia, Germany, France, Japan, Korea, Brazil, Spain, etc do not have cricket in their rosters of sports discipline. SO, HOW TENDULKAR, A CRICKET PLAYER, BECOME A WORLD GREAT SPORTPERSON ? Who is Tendulkar compared to vishwanathan Anand ?, the current chess world champion? He is nothing compared to Anand who is really one of the world’s greatest sport persons, a well known chess master in the world, being chess as popular a sport in almost all countries in the world. Who is Tendulkar compared to Manny Pacquiao?A Filipino, who has the record of winning 8 weight divisions, sanctions by WBA, WBO and IBF, leading world boxing associations. Pacquiao is the current world best pound-for-pound boxer. Who is Tendulkar compared to Rafael Nadal and Roger Federrer ?who are the current greatest tennis players in the world? Tendulkar is nothing compared to the above mentioned great sportpersons who bested various nationalities in their respective field of sports and emerged as real champions. And these acclaimed great players are playing in their individual capacity during the game, unlike cricket which has more than a dozen members. Chess, boxing and tennis are three of the famous sports played all over the world, unlike cricket which yet to be included in Commonwealth games. And much less in FOOTBALL which is truly the WORLD’s sport. Tendulkar is nothing in comparison to Lionnel Messi, Rooney, Henry, Zidane, Drogba, Villa and other footballers who take the current WORLD center stage on that sport in the five continents. There are other great sports persons in the world, and I mean WORLD, not just a country like India, which the kind of Tendulkar will pale to be at par with. I guess India is blowing it out of proportion as it hardly trying to sell cricket through Sachin Tendulkar, with such over promotion. No right-minded and sane sports person and community will buy that. I can’t help but smile on this foolishness of Indians trying to deceive themselves. I suggest India should calibrate its promotion. Make it BEST PLAYER IN INDIA, and not WORLD, to avoid embarrassment to your favorite cricket player who is known only in India and perhaps in some cricket circle abroad, but definitely not even in 10% of the world’s nations. H. Gamos Chennai
yes i truly agree with you that sachin and cricket are not known in the world. this is a nonsense hype by the indian government and indian media. watching the media, so does the people do. its all rubbish that sachin is worlds greatest sportsperson. he could be best cricket player but not sportsperson as its not always his individual performance. other players like viswanathan Anand should also be applauded who on their own talent of brains have conquered the place of world champion.
