Tendulkar to bat on at 40

NEW DELHI: Record-breaking batsman Sachin Tendulkar turns 40 on Wednesday with no plans to retire despite media speculation and recent form suggesting that age is finally catching up with the "Little Master".

Test and one-day cricket's greatest run-scorer approaches the game with
undiminished enthusiasm and insists he has much to offer despite slipping from the dizzying heights he reached earlier in his 24-year career.

Tendulkar, afforded almost religious status in India, burst onto the world cricket scene as a 16-year-old in 1989 and has played a record 198 Tests and 463 one-dayers, scoring an unprecedented 100 international hundreds.

He was singled out by Don Bradman but the Australian legend's Test average is one of the few marks that Tendulkar has been unable to threaten, with his 15,837 runs coming at 53.86. Bradman averaged 99.94, far more than anyone else.

Questions over Tendulkar's future mounted when he struggled for a year to score the ton he needed to take him to 100 centuries. He finally achieved the landmark against Bangladesh in Dhaka in March 2012.

Tendulkar, who decided not to play Twenty20 internationals after just one match in 2006, announced his retirement from one-day cricket last December in a bid to prolong his glittering Test career.

But his form in the five-day format has also dipped by his own stellar standards. He has scored just 1,145 runs in 21 Tests at an average of 31.80 since being part of India's World Cup-winning team two years ago.

And Tendulkar has not added to his tally of 51 Test centuries since making 146 against South Africa in Cape Town in January 2011.

But despite his struggles with the bat, the veteran is refusing to follow fellow modern greats such as compatriot Rahul Dravid and Australia's Ricky Ponting into retirement.

Sunil Gavaskar, the first man to reach the 10,000-run milestone in Tests, suggested last year that Tendulkar's reflexes were on the slide. Former Australian captain Steve Waugh also feels he is past his best.

When India succumbed to a Test series defeat against England at home in
December, former skipper Sourav Ganguly backed calls for Tendulkar to quit.

"He is getting a long rope because of what he has achieved," Ganguly was quoted as saying by London's Daily Telegraph newspaper. "As somebody watching it from outside, Tendulkar is not performing. "And I think if I were Tendulkar, I would go (retire)."

Six months ago, Tendulkar admitted in a television interview that retirement had crossed his mind, but said he would take it series by series before making a final call.

There has been media speculation over whether Tendulkar will play in India's next Test outing -- a three-match away series against world number one side South Africa starting late in the year.

There is even talk of organising two home Tests against an unknown opponent before the tour of South Africa to enable Tendulkar to bow out with 200 appearances in a farewell series.

As many as 102 cricketers have played Test matches after hitting 40, the oldest being Englishman Wilfred Rhodes, who was 52 when he took on the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1930.(AFP)