India vice-captain Rahul Dravid has dismissed New Zealand all-rounder Chris Cairns's remarks that Sachin Tendulkar has scored 75 per cent of the runs for India in this World Cup.
"Tendulkar is batting up the order. It is true of a lot of teams whose top three have fired in the tournament," he told said.
"Maybe he should ask what percentage of runs Stephen Fleming has scored in the World Cup for New Zealand. That should be an interesting question to ask Cairns.
"When people bat at the top of the order and they are great batsmen in great form, like Sachin, they will score runs. But we have not struggled even after he has got out. We have found people to do well."
Each time Tendulkar has been dismissed in the tournament, the other batsmen have finished the games off consistently. Rahul Dravid and Yuvraj Singh did it against England and Pakistan, and Sourav Ganguly did it against Sri Lanka and Kenya.
Cairns's remarks have embarrassed New Zealand coach Denis Aberhart, who said he wished Cairns, who is a very sensitive performer, would walk the talk before making statements in the media.
Indeed, Cairns's statement is incorrect, since Tendulkar has scored 29.4 per cent of the team's runs in the last eight games of the tournament, with five fifties and a hundred.
Dravid, who had dismal run in the one-dayers in New Zealand, scoring 116 runs at an average of 16.5, with a top score of 21, refused to call Friday's match a 'grudge game'.
"I don't think it is a grudge game. In the end it is a sport and we agree that we had a tough tour and we have come back from that. I don't look at it as a grudge game and I would want to beat them even if we had had a great tour there and won.
"You want to do well because you want to keep the momentum going and sport is not a place where you can keep personal grudges going. The game is more about bigger things than personal grudges."
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