Jump to content

Sachin Tendulkar vs Steve Smith - Comparative Analysis


jalebi_bhai

Who was the better overall batsman at similar stages in their careers (57 Tests and 103 ODIs)?  

58 members have voted

  1. 1. Who was the better overall batsman at similar stages in their careers (57 Tests and 103 ODIs)?

    • Sachin Tendulkar
      37
    • SPD Smith
      21


Recommended Posts

8 minutes ago, Shaz1 said:

Sachin is a average cricketer. There is nothing special about him besides his ablity to score lots of runs due to longetivity. In the Op you can clearly see Smith has surpassed him. 

He was not average.. He is decent who played with lot of average cricketers back in 90s which made him look extraordinary.. It's like putting Dinesh karthik in BD team even he would look like virat kohli..

Link to comment
1 minute ago, Rasgulla said:

Not only good SF he performed even finals of WC 50+ score and a not out when finch got a duck... Virat got team  to SF in 2016 and Finals in 2014 singlehandly.. It can happen even in cricket. It was done on multiple occasions by both virat and smith. He was the highest scorer in finals of CT2013 on a tough pitch where a dude with talent always chocked when going goes tough. This thread is about smith as a player not as a captain... although virat and smith are performing well with captaincy pressure says a lot about them. Sachin didn't have to worry about all of them.. IPL and more T20 cricket is taking a toll on current players. He has non back is his days. Schedule is more packed now... Don't care about what players like gavaskar did.. I have no respect for selfish players from Mumbai lobby and Gavaskar's WC innings is disgusting.

Sorry but your or my caring or not caring will not make any difference.Both Sachin and Gavaskar were products of their eras and were great players and technically superior to Kohli or Smith. 

 

Critics can turn and point out Kohli's total disappearance of many series.It is feast of famine for him so far and hopefully it will change  as he needs to score more if India has any ambitions of winning in SA and England.

Link to comment
15 minutes ago, Rasgulla said:

He was not average.. He is decent who played with lot of average cricketers back in 90s which made him look extraordinary.. It's like putting Dinesh karthik in BD team even he would look like virat kohli..

I call him average because I can see him in a mold of plenty of other batsmen with a pleasing on the eye technique. He scored highly at the time when there were plenty of other cricketers who looked kinda similar technique wise. Sachin’s longetivity played a role on how much hundreds he scored in the end. Give Kohli the same and he will score double that.

Edited by Shaz1
Link to comment
19 minutes ago, King Tendulkar said:

This is what I mean boring rhetoric . This poster just says every Indian player is no good and someone else better . Proper zzzzz stuff . Just cut and post “ Indian player no good others much better “ and be done with it . Save you and us much valuable time 

I agree the Op says it all.

Link to comment
46 minutes ago, Shaz1 said:

Sachin is a average cricketer. There is nothing special about him besides his ablity to score lots of runs due to longetivity. In the Op you can clearly see Smith has surpassed him. 

Do you even know anything about cricket. Only a fool would describe Sachin as average cricketer.Sachin averaged nearly 57 after 177 tests.

 

He hung on too long that is the reason he has lower average.

Edited by putrevus
Link to comment
1 minute ago, putrevus said:

Do you even know anything about cricket. Only a fool would describe Sachin has average cricketer.Sachin averaged nearly 57 after 177 tests.

 

He hung on too long that is the reason he has lower average.

I will give him credit for being consistent for long periods of time. The way he rejuvinated his career in the time it looked like he has been past his prime is remarkable. However if you overlook that and see the batsmen the world has. You can skip his innings and watch another to get a similar sort of excitement in seeing a batsmen who is pleasing on the eye and effective. :no:

Link to comment
3 minutes ago, Shaz1 said:

I call him average because I can see him in a mold of plenty of other batsmen witha a pleasing on the eye technique. He scored highly at the time when there were plenty of other cricketers who looked kinda similar technique wise. Sachin’s longetivity played a role on how much hundreds he scored in the end. Give Kohli the same and he will score double that.

One thing can be said if X or Y player plays 440+ matches they ll end up being all time highest scorer... What will be remembered is how he scored them and what pace.. There is no doubt who plays for team vs who plays for their personal milestones.. That's why Virat gets more respect around the world.. Sachin has people who dislike him in his own country so I won't expect outsiders to like that kind of milestones gameplay.... Hopefully virat ll break that 100 100s done.. He is doing it in right way. I have lot of respect for Virat :yess:

Link to comment
9 minutes ago, Shaz1 said:

I will give him credit for being consistent for long periods of time. The way he rejuvinated his career in the time it looked like he has been past his prime is remarkable. However if you overlook that and see the batsmen the world has. You can skip his innings and watch another to get a similar sort of excitement in seeing a batsmen who is pleasing on the eye and effective. :no:

You are talking as if consistency for that long time is easy.Smith/Kohli are not even half way to Sachin's playing career.

 

Smith will have to take 100 births to match the excitement which Sachin brought.Sachin had his short comings but make no mistake that guy is  the greatest batsman after Bradman to have played this game.

Link to comment
14 minutes ago, Rasgulla said:

One thing can be said if X or Y player plays 440+ matches they ll end up being all time highest scorer... What will be remembered is how he scored them and what pace.. There is no doubt who plays for team vs who plays for their personal milestones.. That's why Virat gets more respect around the world.. Sachin has people who dislike him in his own country so I won't expect outsiders to like that kind of milestones gameplay.... Hopefully virat ll break that 100 100s done.. He is doing it in right way. I have lot of respect for Virat :yess:

Yeah I actually like Virat. You can tell he always plays to win and not worry about getting milestones. I am not saying its wrong to get those milestones cause they do win you matches. Its just at times you can tell if a person is actually trying for the team or for themselves. Like you remember that period he had after achieving the victory in the World Cup. Where he needed like one or two more hundreds to get hundred 100s? He kept on trying to reach that landmark even when you could tell he was past it. After so many failures he achieves it against Bangladesh which the team lost. It was weird seeing a nation celebrating a milestone instead of grieving over a loss. I don’t think a player like Kohli would ever do that.

Edited by Shaz1
Link to comment
6 minutes ago, putrevus said:

You are talking as if consistency for that long time is easy.Smith/Kohli are not even half way to Sachin's playing career.

 

Smith will have to take 100 births to match the excitement which Sachin brought.Sachin had his short comings but make no mistake that guy is  the greatest batsman after Bradman to have played this game.

I agree it would be tough emulating the same longtivity as Sachin. Expecially now since players play all three formats instead of three. 

 

I think entertainment is very subjective. What you will find entertaining wont go for the same for me. If you found him entertaining I will respect your opinion as long as you do mine.

Link to comment

I feel this thread has potential. Lot of Sachin fanboyz will have to come out and will face hard time defending him.

Smith is certainly playing at ATG level now. Selectively speaking as OP mentioned, Smith>Sachin. However, Sachin had longevity which is very unique and lot of players have found it hard to continue for so long. Lets see how where Smith end up. But after 57 tests, smith is way ahead of plenty of other greats.

Link to comment
On 11/26/2017 at 6:40 PM, sandeep said:

Your statistical slice suffers from an unfortunate - probably unintentional - flaw.  By taking Tendy's career up to 97, you are essentially excluding a bunch of his prime performances - the 97-2002 timeframe.  While including Steve Smith's ongoing purple patch.  If you compare the first 4 years of Smith's test career to Tendy's what will you get?  Smith probably averaged below 20 or something horrible like that.  

 

Another factor is that when Tendy was in his prime as a batsman - i.e. pre tennis elbow injury, and after the first couple of teenage years - BCCI had just discovered the money making potential of ODI cricket, and as a result, played maximum numbers of ODIs at the cost of minimal test cricket.   

I by and large agree with what you're saying except for the bold part. This isn't a mere purple patch.

 

Look at his yearly aggregate runs in the last 4 years: 

 

Steve Smith year-year:

table.PNG

SPD Smith year-year.PNG

 

This guy is on the verge of achieving something rare; 4 consecutive calendar years with 1000+ runs. He has a minimum of 3 innings to achieve this rare feat, and I would back him to do so.

 

Here's how some of the modern greats stack up on a year-year basis.

 

SRT year-year:

table.PNG

SRT year-year.PNG

 

Steve Waugh year-year:

table.PNG

image.png

 

Lara year-year:

table.PNG

Lara year-year.PNG

 

Ponting year-year:

table.PNG

Ponting year-year.PNG

 

Sangakkara year-year:

table.PNG

Sanga year-year.PNG

 

Mohd. Yousuf year-year:

table.PNG

youhana year-year.PNG

 

Dravid year-year:

table.PNG

Dravid year-year.PNG

 

Younis Khan year-year:

table.PNG

younis khan year-year.PNG

 

Kallis year-year:

table.PNG

kallis year-year.PNG

 

Jayawardene year-year:

table.PNG

mahela year-year.PNG

 

Sehwag year-year:

table.PNG

sehwag year-year.PNG

 

SRT, Lara, Ponting and Kallis came very close. Had SRT played more games in 98 and 00, he would've probably gone 4-5 years having scored 1000+ runs in a calendar year. With Lara, Ponting and Kallis, it was just one relatively mediocre year in between that prevented them from going 3+ consecutive years with 1000+ runs. Lara did manage 3 consecutive years of 1000+ runs towards the end of his career.  

 

Now let's compare him with his contemporaries:

 

Cook year-year:

table.PNG

Cook year-year.PNG

 

Joe Root year-year:

table.PNG

root year-year.PNG

 

Amla year-year:

table.PNG

Amla year-year.PNG

 

ABD year-year:

table.PNG

ABD year-year.PNG

 

Williamson year-year:

table.PNG

Williamson year-year.PNG

 

Kohli year-year:

table.PNG

kohli year-year.PNG

 

Pujara year-year:

table.PNG

pujara year-year.PNG

 

Only Root and Cook have come close to achieving 3 consecutive years with 1000+ runs among his contemporaries. Root might actually do it this year as he has a minimum of 3 innings left this year to score 205 runs. You could also add Amla in the mix of contemporaries who have come close. The rest are nowhere near.

 

Not bad for a guy who debuted as a leg-spinner with some batting ability, eh? 

Link to comment

To be frank you can bring any number of stats but you can never compare people from different eras by just numbers. The reason being you can never replicate pitch conditions or the bowling attacks across eras to make the comparison valid. How do you know if Sachin at his peak in the current era will not be as good as Smith? Or How can you prove Smith would have been as good in the 90's against the bowling Sachin faced and the pitches Sachin played on? No matter how we spin it, the bowling attacks in the 90's were way better than it is today and the pitches were much more conducive to pace bowling compared to today. People are forgetting that even West Indies were a very good team till 1995. West Indies won a tri series featuring Pakistan and South Africa easily in 1993/94. They won test series against Pakistan away and England away before 1994-95. They were a very strong team. EVen their second string bowlers like W Benjamin, K Benjamin, P Patterson, A Cummins were all way better than most of the bowlers we see today playing world cricket. Only NZ and England probably have better attacks right now.

 

So to bring some numbers and say Sachin or any batsman from 90's is worse than Steven Smith would be a great disservice to the players of the previous eras. Steven Smith is a fantastic batsman and will end up as a ATG. He will be the best batsman of this era, thats about it. You cannot compare him with legends of the past and tell he was better than them just based on stat as there is no way to compare them on an even keel. The best comparison for Steven Smith is to compare him with his peers and he is way ahead of all in tests and that is the only valid comparison. 

Link to comment

This is an interesting question and my short answer is: Stewie is a bigger potential match winner for me but SRT was the more complete batsman.

 

To the OP, I would say that SRT was quite an ordinary batsman for the first 3-4 years of his career (rather like Smith) because he debuted too early. From early 1993 to mid 2011 (about 18.5 yrs), Sachin averaged 59.41 across 157 tests and scored 13607 runs and 47 100s. During this period, his "poorest" away record was averaging 45 in Pak and he averaged around 50 or more in almost all of the other countries. These are staggering numbers and a reflection of his consistency. To this, one must remember that from 1993-2000 SRT played against some very good bowlers in a decade that was bowling friendly.

 

The reason I bring up all these stats is to reflect SRT's consistency. However, ultimately choosing what player is "great" is partly a matter of choice too. I do believe that Smith can average around 60+ over a 100 Tests period, but I think it will be impossible to avg nearly 60 after playing 160 Tests across 18.5 years.

Link to comment
10 hours ago, cricketpitch said:

To be frank you can bring any number of stats but you can never compare people from different eras by just numbers. The reason being you can never replicate pitch conditions or the bowling attacks across eras to make the comparison valid. How do you know if Sachin at his peak in the current era will not be as good as Smith? Or How can you prove Smith would have been as good in the 90's against the bowling Sachin faced and the pitches Sachin played on? No matter how we spin it, the bowling attacks in the 90's were way better than it is today and the pitches were much more conducive to pace bowling compared to today. 

And how have you come to this conclusion? If you're going to use statistics, then I will have to quote your own logic back to you.

10 hours ago, cricketpitch said:

To be frank you can bring any number of stats but you can never compare people from different eras by just numbers. 

As you've mentioned, pitches in the 90s were more bowler friendly and hence it is a given that bowlers of that time would've had better records. But can we say with absolute certainty that the best bowlers of this era wouldn't have been equally effective on those pitches? I don't think so. 

10 hours ago, cricketpitch said:

So to bring some numbers and say Sachin or any batsman from 90's is worse than Steven Smith would be a great disservice to the players of the previous eras. Steven Smith is a fantastic batsman and will end up as a ATG. He will be the best batsman of this era, thats about it. You cannot compare him with legends of the past and tell he was better than them just based on stat as there is no way to compare them on an even keel. The best comparison for Steven Smith is to compare him with his peers and he is way ahead of all in tests and that is the only valid comparison. 

And you're doing a similar disservice to the batsmen and bowlers of this era in the first paragraph of your post. Cricketers don't pick their opponent's team, they can only play against what's in front of them.    

 

Whichever way you present the data, Steve Smith's achievements over the last 4 years are one of a kind. Aggregating 1000+ runs in 4 consecutive calendar years is just unprecedented, and he is on his way to achieving that.  

Link to comment
11 hours ago, jalebi_bhai said:

And how have you come to this conclusion? If you're going to use statistics, then I will have to quote your own logic back to you.

As you've mentioned, pitches in the 90s were more bowler friendly and hence it is a given that bowlers of that time would've had better records. But can we say with absolute certainty that the best bowlers of this era wouldn't have been equally effective on those pitches? I don't think so. 

And you're doing a similar disservice to the batsmen and bowlers of this era in the first paragraph of your post. Cricketers don't pick their opponent's team, they can only play against what's in front of them.    

 

Whichever way you present the data, Steve Smith's achievements over the last 4 years are one of a kind. Aggregating 1000+ runs in 4 consecutive calendar years is just unprecedented, and he is on his way to achieving that.  

From the data you posted, had Tendu gotten enough Tests in 1998 and 2000 (when the BCCI was nuts about ODIs) he could have had 6 straight years with 1000+ runs. This stretch includes the 90s where the pitches were arguably more bowler-friendly and the level of bowling was similar (or perhaps better) compared to the current era. With all that said, I think that Smith is the most complete batsman that we've seen so far in the 21st century (i.e. among those who made their FC and Test debut in the 2000s).

Link to comment
12 hours ago, jalebi_bhai said:

And how have you come to this conclusion? If you're going to use statistics, then I will have to quote your own logic back to you.

As you've mentioned, pitches in the 90s were more bowler friendly and hence it is a given that bowlers of that time would've had better records. But can we say with absolute certainty that the best bowlers of this era wouldn't have been equally effective on those pitches? I don't think so. 

And you're doing a similar disservice to the batsmen and bowlers of this era in the first paragraph of your post. Cricketers don't pick their opponent's team, they can only play against what's in front of them.    

 

Whichever way you present the data, Steve Smith's achievements over the last 4 years are one of a kind. Aggregating 1000+ runs in 4 consecutive calendar years is just unprecedented, and he is on his way to achieving that.  

Seriously you want statistics to prove, Glenn Mcgrath, Alan Donald, Curtly Ambrose, Muralitharan, Shane Warne, Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Courtney Walsh, Shaun Pollock, Jason Gillespie, Anil Kumble, et all as greats? or better bowlers than lots of them playing currently? I have watched all my cricket in the 90's and don't require statistic to call the above bowlers as greats and better than most of them bowling today. 

 

I am not doing any disservice to current generation, if you read my post completely you would know that I said Steven Smith is ahead of his peers by a long way. Which means that he will end up as a great, I am just saying that he does not need to be better than a player of the previous era as stats cannot always give you the clear picture. I have never watched Viv Richards or Sunil Gavaskar live, have only watched videos on youtube, I cannot say that Matthew Hayden is equal to Sunil or Virat is better than Richards by looking at the stats alone. You need to see what era they played in, Playing conditions, Bowling attacks every thing to make a valid comparison. Can you beyond doubt prove, Sachin Tendulkar or Vivian Richards in their peak would not equal Smith's current performance if they were playing currently? Sachin for a sustained period of time averaged close to 60 from mid nineties to early 2000's. At the same time can we beyond doubt prove that Smith or Kohli would have out performed Sachin or Richards from the previous eras if they played then? We cannot and anything we do will only be speculation and cannot be based on facts. Smith can only be compared properly and factually with his peers and he is better than all of them at the moment in tests and that is the only valid comparison.

Edited by cricketpitch
Link to comment
14 hours ago, Vijy said:

From the data you posted, had Tendu gotten enough Tests in 1998 and 2000 (when the BCCI was nuts about ODIs) he could have had 6 straight years with 1000+ runs. This stretch includes the 90s where the pitches were arguably more bowler-friendly and the level of bowling was similar (or perhaps better) compared to the current era. With all that said, I think that Smith is the most complete batsman that we've seen so far in the 21st century (i.e. among those who made their FC and Test debut in the 2000s).

No arguments here. He was very unfortunate with regards to the number of Tests he played in those two years and I've acknowledged that. 

 

 

Link to comment

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...