Sachin gets the Gavaskar treatment

Gavaskar has watched Tendulkar for years

By Oliver Brett BBC Sport Online

These days, any sports editor seeking a sensational cricket headline would do well to give Sunil Gavaskar a call.

The man who was once arguably the most feared batsman in the world is now the most feared critic.

And the Hindustan Times, however much it has invested in the journalistic services of Gavaskar, is getting a decent run for its money at the moment.

Gavaskar seemed to spend most of the month of December 2001 searching for new ways of condemning England's tourists in India.

Nasser Hussain's men batted "like a church team" in the Mohali debacle, he reckoned.

Duncan Fletcher was hurt by Gavaskar's words

Fair comment, one might say - after all they were genuinely poor on a pitch that should not have frightened them.

But things began to get a little harsher when Gavaskar called England boring after the second Test at Ahmedabad, in which India refused to chase a target of 374 to win.

"No wonder the flair players like Ian Botham and David Gower have no place in England's cricketing thinking," lamented the great man.

"They are the most unattractive and boring side to have played cricket in India."

The comments rankled England coach Duncan Fletcher, normally the most sanguine of characters.

And the England and Wales Cricket Board began to question what place the outspoken Gavaskar had within the corridors of power at the International Cricket Council.

Gavaskar consults world captains in his ICC role

Gavaskar has at least proved he was prepared to criticise his own countrymen in his latest Hindustan Times pieces centred on their tour of the West Indies.

Sourav Ganguly's men ended up with a respectable enough draw from the first Test in Guyana, but Gavaskar reckoned that the batting order was all wrong.

He stayed relatively quiet after his country won in Trinidad, but now, with their heavy defeat in Barbados to consider, Gavaskar has criticised India's best batsman, Sachin Tendulkar.

Gavaskar's record of 34 Test centuries has still not been beaten.

But with Tendulkar apparently closing swiftly on that mark, it seems almost sacrilege - in the face of an Indian public who accord him God-like status - to criticise the Bombay maestro.

But Gavaskar has a go anyway. "He is playing across the line so much," he writes.

"Even during that century innings, especially in the early part, he was rapped on the pads often and was lucky to get away with a couple of appeals.

Tendulkar is getting across his stumps too far

"He is moving back and across, something he rarely does.

"By doing that, he is opening his right shoulder a bit and that is bringing his bat down at an angle unlike the impeccably straight way it usually comes down."

Gavaskar seems to have a point, as it happens.

The constant diet of playing vast amounts of one-day and Test cricket on a variety of surfaces can make even the finest batsmen pick up bad habits.

On home soil against England, particularly during the six one-dayers, Tendulkar often needed to hit seamers like Matthew Hoggard from outside the off-stump through the leg-side.

It exasperated Hoggard, but it was a shot that a batsman of Tendulkar's class - on pitches like Calcutta's - could frankly do in his sleep.

But against tall fast bowlers in a Test at Bridgetown, it's a far riskier proposition.

Sachin recorded scores of nought and eight in Barbados. In the next Test in Antigua, however, he could easily get to within four centuries of equalling Gavaskar's centuries record.

If and when he does overtake Sunny, then further debate on Tendulkar's technique will have to be silenced.