WS MoreOrLess: Sachin Tendulkar - best batsman of all time?
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This is the short edition of More or Less, first broadcast on the BBC World Service.
Hello and welcome to More or Less on the BBC World Service.
I'm Ruth Alexander.
Tendulkar runs for a single. That's history. That's a century. Sachin Tendulkar's 100th century is the first cricketer ever to do this. 100 hundreds.
As Sachin Tendulkar walked out to the crease for the final time in Mumbai, he was bringing to an end a career that has earned him every accolade in cricket and deified status in India. In the words of the poet C.P. Surendran...
Batsmen walk out into the middle alone, but not Tendulkar. Every time Tendulkar walks to the crease, a whole nation, tatters and all, marches with him to the battle arena.
They call him the god of cricket, but do his statistics back up this reputation for being the greatest cricketer in history? Ben Carter's been figuring it out.
Well, if we look purely at cumulative runs scored, then this programme would be the shortest one we've ever made. Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar has amassed nearly 16,000 test runs, which is 2,500 more than any other batsman ever. So he's way ahead. He's way ahead, but he's also way ahead in terms of the number of games played. He's played 200 times. That's more test matches played than anyone ever.
But then maybe that's part of Tendulkar's greatness. He's played a lot of matches because he was brilliant from a young age.
Yes, what the aggregate figures show indisputably is that Tendulkar has been a great batsman for a long time. But perhaps a fairer way of comparing cricketers is by looking at their averages. Tendulkar scored on average just shy of 54 runs per innings.
Is that the best of all time?
No, the best average belongs to the Australian batsman Donald Bradman, whose career started in the 1920s. Incredibly, he ended his career in 1948 with an average of 99.94 runs per innings.
So where does Tendulkar rank?
If we look at the performances of all batsmen ever who've played a minimum of 20 test matches, Tendulkar is in 17th place, with two of his contemporaries ahead of him, South Africa's Jack Callis, who scored an average of about 55 runs per innings, and Sri Lanka's Kumar Sangakkara, who scores at about 57.
So he's not even in the all-time top ten?
No. Another way to judge him is to look at the ratings the International Cricket Council have given him during his career.
And these ratings look at more than just runs scored?
Yes. They judge your performances over your career, taking into account various factors such as the strength of the opposition and how you performed in relation to other batsmen. Tendulkar's highest rating was in 2002. He was awarded a rating of 898 when playing against Zimbabwe, but that rating is only the 29th highest of all time.
Sachin Tendulkar, 29th best cricketer of all time. Is that what we're saying?
Well, you could say that. His rating there is just short of 900. And that's the score which the ICC says is an indication of world class form.
900. 900.
Now, Sangakara, Callis, Brian Lara and Ricky Ponting all hit that benchmark.
So the ICC ratings imply that at his peak, Tendulkar wasn't as impressive as his contemporaries.
That's right. But again, we've got to think about Tendulkar's consistency. He topped the batting tables five times in 16 years, and the ICC has described his performance as showing supreme consistency. But as we've said, there are many ways to measure a cricketer's greatness. Cricket writers Patrick Faraday and Dave Wilson, authors of Masterly Batting, 100 Great Test Centuries, created their list by looking at a number of different criteria, such as the size of the innings, the conditions and the bowling strength. Tendulkar makes the list just once, in a hundredth spot. Here's Patrick Faraday.
I would say that Tendulkar's reputation exists partly on his longevity, partly on his amazing consistency, and partly under the huge pressure that he's played virtually his whole career as an icon of the Indian nation. But I don't think he played the outstanding, what you might call stellar innings that, for example, Brian Lara played.
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