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The absence of injured Sachin Tendulkar from India’s squad will be a big loss for spectators in the Caribbean as the team arrives in the region for a series of five matches, West Indies captain Brian Lara said.

“I think it is unfortunate because we are all entertainers. The public would have loved to see Sachin,” Lara said as his team trained on Thursday in preparation for its final two matches in its current series against Zimbabwe.

“He’s going to be here for the World Cup hopefully, but any opportunity to see him would have been great for the public,” Lara added.

Lara and Tendulkar, who both broke into international cricket in the early 1990s, have been long considered the contemporary game’s leading batsmen.

The 37-year-old Lara added that the presence of a player of Tendulkar’s class could help the development of young West Indies players.

“As team members, we can only learn from a player like that,” Lara said.

“It doesn’t mean that India, with a player like Sachin Tendulkar in the team, is actually going to beat the West Indies,” Lara explained. “Yes, they would have a player of high class but we would have loved to have him here playing against us,” he added. The five-match one-day series against India begins in Jamaica on Thursday.

Source:The News