Mumbai Indians’ fielding coach and former South Africa player Jonty Rhodes on Thursday said that it’s still too early to say whether someone can match Sachin Tendulkar’s landmark of hundred international tons although he conceded that records are meant to be broken.

“Records are meant to be broken. Who could have ever thought that Sachin or anybody will score hundred hundreds. I am impressed watching Virat Kohli bat, the conversion rate once he gets a start is simply outstanding. I think he has got more 100s than he has got fifties, which is a great sign and which shows someone who is very hungry for runs.”

“At this stage, it’s easy to say a guy like Virat is expected to break the record. But mentally Sachin has been so strong playing under pressure for India for so many years. Rhodes said he has not asked Tendulkar on how he has coped up with the mass adulation for so many years, but has only witnessed it first-hand.

“I have just watched it, haven’t yet asked. He’s a pretty private person, that’s amazing. I think he finds time to actually get away from everything, it is so important.”

“We haven’t spoken a great deal, but from what I have seen, his family is a great support for him. He doesn’t go out and put himself under any more spotlight than he has to and he makes sure that when he’s around he focuses on what he has to and that is score runs for India and Mumbai.”

When asked what discussions does he have with Tendulkar on fielding, Rhodes said he tries to ensure that Sachin doesn’t hurt his fingers during Mumbai’s practice sessions.

“I just keep asking him how his fingers are because I don’t want him to come for practice and then suddenly walk away, with a broken finger as his fingers are generally getting hit,” Rhodes said. “I just make sure he’s comfortable fielding. I don’t even expect Sachin to come down to every fielding drill. It’s just certain exercises and drill we do as a fielding team and I ensure that his fingers don’t get any worse than they are.”
© PTI

Here is the complete list of players of the fifth edition of Indian Premier League 2012.

Chennai Super Kings Team 2012
Murali Vijay, Suresh Raina, Michael Hussey, George Bailey, Albie Morkel, Kuthethurshri Vasudevadas, Srikkanth Anirudha, Subramaniam Badrinath, Abhinav Mukund, Doug Bollinger, Ben Hilfenhaus, Nuwan Kulasekara, Ravichandran Ashwin, Shadab Jakati, Suraj Randiv, Sudeep Tyagi, Dwayne Bravo, Ravindra Jadeja, Scott Styris, Faf du Plessis, Joginder Sharma, Yo Mahesh, Ganapathi Vignesh, MS Dhoni (Captain) and Wriddhiman Saha.

Deccan Chargers Team 2012
Cameron White, Daniel Harris, Darren Bravo, Shikhar DhawanTekkami Atchuta Rao, Chris Lynn, Bharat Chipli, Jean-Paul Duminy, Sunny Sohal, Ishank Jaggi, Tanmay Mishra, Veer Pratap Singh, Dwaraka Ravi Teja, Biplab Samantray, Sneha Kishore, Tanmay Srivastava, TP Sudhindra, Abhishek Jhunjhunwala, Syed Quadri, Akshath Reddy,Arjun Yadav, Rusty Theron, Dale Steyn, Ishant Sharma, Manpreet Gony, Amit Mishra, Anand Rajan, Ashish Reddy, Ankit Sharma, Akash Bhandari, Daniel Christian, Kumar Sangakkara (Captain), Parthiv Patel and Kedar Devdhar.

Delhi Daredevils Team 2012
Virender Sehwag (Captain), David Warner, Mahela Jayawardene, Kevin Pietersen, Ross Taylor, Aaron Finch, Travis Birt, Robin Bist, Venugopal Rao, Unmukt Chand, Prashant Naik, Manprit Juneja, Puneet Bisht, Pawan Negi, Kuldeep Raval, Tejashwi Yadav, Morne Morkel, Aavishkar, Salvi Varun Aaron, Andre Russell, Umesh Yadav, Ajit Agarkar, Doug Bracewell, Shahbaz Nadeem, Vikas Mishra, Irfan Pathan, Roelof van der Merwe, Yogesh Nagar and Naman Ojha.

Kings XI Punjab Team 2012
Shaun Marsh, Sunny Singh, David Miller, Paul Valthaty, Azhar Mahmood, Dimitri Mascarenhas, Paras Dogra, Parvinder Awana, Siddharth Chitnis, James Faulkner, Ramesh Powar, Nitin Saini, Stuart Broad, Praveen Kumar, Ryan Harris, Nathan Rimmington, Love Ablish, Harmeet Singh, Bhargav Bhatt, Vikramjeet Malik, Shalabh Srivastava, Bipul Sharma, Piyush Chawla, Mandeep Singh, Rajagopal Sathish, Amit Yadav and Adam Gilchrist (captain).

Kolkata Knight Riders Team 2012
Gautam Gambhir (Captain), Marchant de Lange, Eoin Morgan Sunil Narine, Manoj Tiwary, Debabrata Das, Chirag Jani, Sanju Samson, Iresh Saxena, Brett Lee, James Pattinson, Lakshmipathy Balaji, Iqbal Abdulla, Pradeep Sangwan, Shami Ahmed, Sarabjit Ladda, Jaydev Unadkat, Jacques Kallis, Yusuf Pathan, Ryan ten Doeschate, Laxmi Shukla, Rajat Bhatia, Shakib Al Hasan, Brendon McCullum, Brad Haddin and Manvinder Bisla.

Mumbai Indians Team 2012
Sachin Tendulkar (Captain), Herschelle Gibbs, Rohit Sharma, Richard Levi, Tirumalasetti Suman, Sujit NayakApoorv Wankhade, Aiden Blizzard, Jaydev Shah, Rahul Shukla, Suryakumar YadavAmitoze Singh, Mitchell Johnson, Lasith Malinga,Munaf Patel Clint McKay, RP Singh, Harbhajan Singh, Robin Peterson, Pragyan Ojha,Pawan Suyal, Abu Nechim, Dhawal Kulkarni, Yuzvendra Chahal, James Franklin, Thisara Perera, Kieron Pollard, Davy Jacobs, Dinesh Karthik, Ambati Rayudu, Sushant Marathe and Aditya Tare.

Pune Warriors Team 2012
Robin Uthappa, Sourav Ganguly (Captain), Graeme Smith, Marlon Samuels, Callum Ferguson, Harshad Khadiwale, Mohnish Mishra, Harpreet Singh, Dheeraj Jadhav, Yuvraj Singh, Anustup Majumdar, Manish Pandey, Krishnakant Upadhyay, Kamran Khan, Ashish Nehra, Wayne Parnell, Alfonso Thomas, Ashok Dinda, Nathan McCullum, Rahul Sharma, Murali Kartik, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Ali Murtaza, Sachin Rana, Jesse Ryder, Angelo Mathews, James Hopes, Luke Wright, Raiphi Gomez, Mithun Manhas, Shrikant Wagh and Eklavya Dwivedi

Rajasthan Royals Team 2012
Rahul Dravid (Captain), Brad Hodge, Ajinkya Rahane, Owais Shah, Kevon Cooper, Aakash Chopra, Ankeet Chavan, Faiz Fazal, Shaun Tait, Sreesanth, Samad Fallah, Siddharth Trivedi ,Deepak Chahar, Aditya Dole, Pankaj Singh, Amit Singh, Shane Watson, Johan Botha, Brad Hogg, Paul Collingwood, Sumit Narwal, Abhishek Raut, Stuart Binny, Ashok Menaria, Dinesh Chandimal, Shreevats Goswami, Amit Paunikar, Pinal Shah and Dishant Yagnik

Royal Challengers Bangalore Team 2012
Virat Kohli, Saurabh Tiwary, Mohammad Kaif, Rilee Rossouw, KP Appanna, Arun Karthik, Karun Nair, Cheteshwar Pujara, Mayank Agarwal, Harshal Patel, Vijay Zol, Dirk Nannes, Zaheer Khan,Charl Langeveldt, Vinay Kumar, Abhimanyu Mithun, Muttiah Muralitharan, Asad Pathan, Jamaluddin Syed Mohammad, Sreenath Aravind, Abrar Kazi, Chris Gayle, Tillakaratne Dilshan, Andrew McDonald, Daniel Vettori (Captain), Ryan Ninan, Raju Bhatkal, AB de Villiers, Muralidharen Gautam, Luke Pomersbach.

Mumbai : Indian Premier League (IPL) franchise Mumbai Indians Monday signed T20 sensation Richard Levi of South Africa for the forthcoming fifth edition, replacing Australia’s Andrew Symonds as a foreign player.

The 24-year-old powerful opener Richard Levi, who blasted himself into the record books with the fastest T20 international century against New Zealand last week, will make his maiden appearance in the cash-rich event and will be available for the full season.

Expressing eagerness to join the likes of Mumbai Indians captain Sachin Tendulkar and Harbhajan Singh in the team, Levi said: “I am honoured to have Mumbai Indians management interest in my services. Sachin Tendulkar has been my childhood hero and it would be exciting to share the dressing room with him.”

Levi broke Chris Gayle and Brendon McCullum’s record of the fastest century in Hamilton, New Zealand, smashing an unbeaten 117 off 67 balls. He got to three figures in 45 balls.(IANS)

Chris Gayle: Pan cakes and plain Omlettes – my secret. I am on a diet, more drinking than eating. The ball was coming onto the bat. Mayank took a bit of pressure off my shoulders and 180 odd was a real good score on this wicket. This is one of the most successful run I have had in my career, one big effort will make me more happy. Regardless of what happens, I want to lift the trophy tomorrow. We are looking forward to enjoy it tomorrow.

Chris Gayle takes his 6th Man of the Match this IPL

Daniel Vettori: This is a continuation of how well we have played this season, Chris played really well. He is such a destructive player and he doesn’t have any such weakness. Once again, our opening bowling should fire tomorrow. Aravind has been good for us and has picked up wickets at regular intervals. The conditions are going to suit the Super Kings and we’ll be more than happy if we can pull it off.

Sachin Tendulkar: Initially Gayle started things and set the tone for them, we came back quite strongly in the last ten overs. We held them back to 184 runs and with the kind of start they got, they could have gone well above 200. 170 odd was good, we gave around 15 extra runs and we were not good on the field. I felt this was chaseable, the first time we played here Chennai had scored 200+ and we lost by just about 3 runs. So, we were positive. The ball was coming on nicely, but in the middle overs, we got stuck, we had to hit a few more shots. I have to admit that we were inconsistent towards the second half of the tournament, the opening partnership didn’t work for us. And in the later stages, the middle order faltered.