Indian cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar will return to the field in the inaugural International Masters League (IML), a six-team T20 tournament scheduled for later this year at three venues. The event is conceived by Tendulkar and fellow batting great Sunil Gavaskar, who will also serve as the league’s commissioner.
Tendulkar (51) last made an appearance on the cricket pitch during the Road Safety World Series held in Raipur in 2022. The Master Blaster was the skipper of the squad that triumphed over the Sri Lanka Legends by 33 runs in the championship match.
As observed in a news report by the news agency, PTI IML will include players from India, Australia, South Africa, England, Sri Lanka and West Indies. These matches will be held in Mumbai, Lucknow and Raipur. An official press release quoted as saying that:
“Tendulkar and Gavaskar will collaborate with PMG Sports and SPORTFIVE, a sports marketing company, in establishing another company in India to stage the league.”
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Expressing his views on the International Masters League, Tendulkar stated:
“In the last decade, T20 cricket has accelerated its adoption, and has drawn new fans into the game. There is now a strong desire among fans across ages, to re-witness age-old battles in newer formats.”
“Sportspersons never retire at heart and the competitive streak within waits for an opportunity to get back on the field. We have conceived the International Masters League as a meeting point of passionate fans and competitive cricketers,” he went on to add.
As per Gavaskar, the International Masters League will offer fans a close proximity to the has-beens whom they have looked up to for years. He went further to note that there will also be another opportunity for the viewers to see their idols in the sport play.
The legendary statistics of Tendulkar and Gavaskar
Tendulkar holds the record for being the highest run-scoring cricketer in the history of the game. He has scored a total of 34,357 runs, 100 of which are centuries and 164 of them are fifties, in 664 games (782 innings) in all the three formats of the game. The ex-captain of India managed to score 15,921 features in 200 Tests and 18,426 outings in 463 ODIs.
Considering the statistics of Gavaskar as well, he made his 125 Test appearances and scored 10,122 runs with the average of 51.12 including 34 hundreds as well as 45 fifties. In the one-day internationals, he appeared in 108 games and made 3092 runs with the average of 35.13 scoring 1 century and 27 fifties.
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