Tendulkar's quest for his hundredth hundred

[CG]

When you are considering S/R even at his best in ODI's he is not a match for a Symonds or a Gilly for example in power hitting on a consistent basis. I am certain even if 20-20 was introduced let us say 20 years back I will put my money on players like Symo' date=' Giily, Viru, Gayle to be the most destructive players based on S/R and Tendulkar will be a rung below that set.[/quote'] In 90's you had quality fastbowlers and pitches were not as flat as now tendulkar has done well against them when likes of hayden were struggling ,Against those attacks in their prime symonds,viru,gayle,gilly would not match tendulkar.

[bulbul]

In 90's you had quality fastbowlers and pitches were not as flat as now tendulkar has done well against them when likes of hayden were struggling ' date='Against those attacks in their prime symonds,viru,gayle,gilly would not match tendulkar.[/quote'] do we have data of how many balls Each batsman faced against any bowler he played? just curious because every time i am eading this That batsman faced this Bowler in this era...

[CG]

do we have data of Each batsman against wvry bowler he faced? just curious because every time i am eading this That batsman faced this Bowler in this era...

Its should be on cricinfo.

[bulbul]

Its should be on cricinfo.

i thought you have... may be Boss bhai have

[The Outsider]

Will answer only this point. Maybe because it never happened because? There are lots of such meaningless stats celebrated before' date=' most 100s, average in domestic cricket, etc[/quote'] I don't remember there even being a mention of when the first batsman made 10,000 international runs. I don't even know who he was, but would guess it was Richards.

[The Outsider]

I don't remember there even being a mention of when the first batsman made 10' date='000 international runs. I don't even know who he was, but would guess it was Richards.[/quote'] I was off by a few runs in my guess. It was Gavaskar: http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/stats/index.html?class=11;filter=advanced;orderby=runs;qualmin1=8000;qualval1=runs;spanmax1=03+Oct+1985;spanval1=span;template=results;type=batting Would be a nice pub trivia question. Or make it second fastest to 10000 international runs which would be Richards.

[Texan]

Why the 100th doesn't matter An excellent article by Mukul Kesavan on cricinfo. Personally, if Sachin scores 99 in the Boxing Day test and India wins, I will be very happy. But I'm sure there are many people who would rather see Sachin score a 100 and for whom it doesn't matter much whether India wins or not. http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/543468.html

An "international hundred" is an artificial landmark and we don't need to be flying into a frenzy because Tendulkar is on the brink of a hundred of those. Had Sachin Tendulkar scored six more runs in Mumbai against West Indies, he would have climbed a cricketing Everest: a hundred international hundreds! No one has done this before, not even Bradman. And it's not as if Bradman didn't have the time: he played international cricket for nearly as long as Tendulkar has done: 20 years. I can hear pedants object that there were no ODIs in Bradman's time. So? They had Test matches, didn't they? And if he played only 52, whose fault was that? Slacker. How many Test centuries did Bradman have? Twenty-nine. Twenty-nine? Tendulkar has 51. If he had gotten those six runs, he would have had 52 Test centuries, one for every Test that Bradman played. That would have been a record too, a minor landmark in Sachin's unmatched career. How well I remember the great Muttiah Muralitharan's 1000th international wicket! How it was anticipated, how tense we were when he got to 999, how relieved when the great man winkled out the name of his 1000th victim escapes me, but Cricinfo's Statsguru is bound to have it. Murali went on to take 1334 international wickets, 800 in Test matches and 534 in ODIs. The last 334 wickets were surplus to requirement because it's round numbers that count. Like a hundred hundreds. There's a ring to it. A century of centuries! My sources in a daily tell me that the paper has planned an eight-inch headline, just a single word: CEN-DULKAR! You read it here first. Warne understood the round-number thing: the moment he got to 1001 wickets (he got the extra one because Hindus believe it's auspicious) he called it a day. You didn't know that Warne had a thousand international wickets (708 in Test matches and 293 in ODIs)? Those numbers don't trip off your tongue? And you call yourself a fan. Pah. How to explain the grandeur of Tendulkar's imminent achievement when you're surrounded by illiterates who don't know the basics about cricket? I'm joking. The real cricketing illiterates are the people who believe that adding ODI centuries to Test centuries and arriving at a hundred gives you a heroic landmark. It doesn't. This isn't just a meaningless statistic, it's a pernicious one, because it equalises two different orders of achievement. Making a hundred in a Test is a lot harder than making a hundred in an ODI. The opposition's best bowlers can bowl at you endlessly in Test cricket, instead of being limited to 10 overs; Test cricket features many more close-in catchers; and as the pitch deteriorates over five days, batting gets harder. Making runs quickly is harder too, because the fielding captain can set defensive fields without the field restrictions that make ODI cricket a leather hunt for the bowling side. To club one-day centuries with Test centuries is to implicitly argue that Tendulkar's epic hundred at the WACA on his first tour of Australia, is the same sort of score as the meaningless hundreds he scored in those squalid ODIs against Pakistan in Sharjah. It isn't, and when we suggest that it is by inventing this empty category, "international hundreds", we devalue Test cricket and debase the currency of cricketing terms. It is to speak and think like a child with 99 coins in his piggy bank, 51 made of silver and 48 of lead, who is dying to acquire one more coin of either kind because he will then have a hundred metal coins. The child can be indulged because he's too young to know better, but what of the grown men and women who follow cricket and report and comment on it, who carry on as if something monumental is about to happen each time Tendulkar crosses 50, and then mime tragedy when it doesn't? If Tendulkar played Twenty20 cricket for India, would an "international century" scored in that format count towards this century of hundreds? Even children know that winning a game of checkers isn't the same as winning a game of chess, though both are played over the same 64 squares. When we invent this empty category, "international hundreds", we devalue Test cricket and debase the currency of cricketing terms. It is to speak and think like a child with 99 coins in his piggy bank, 51 made of silver and 48 of lead, who is dying to acquire one more coin of either kind because he will then have a hundred metal coins So why are we going on like idiots about this non-event, this half-wit's holy grail? Why can't we be content to celebrate Tendulkar's real achievement? Fifty-one Test hundreds. Say that slowly because no one will ever score more. And if you must celebrate his 48 ODI centuries, do, but as a distinct and separate achievement. There's no such thing as an international hundred. If you do want to join his Test centuries to some other figure to bulk out his numbers, add to them his 27 first-class hundreds: at least those were made in the same four-innings format of the game. The reason no breathless Indian television anchor is hyperventilating about Tendulkar's 78 first-class centuries is because that number doesn't sufficiently distinguish the great man: there are many batsman who have better numbers. Tendulkar, whose 22-year career shadows India's history since economic liberalisation, has become, through no fault of his own, the totem of New India's self-congratulatory middle class. He is at once their redeemer and their guarantee of self-worth. He must, therefore, be a singular genius: in the heaven of cricket, there must only be one God: Tendulkar. And so a copywriter's meaningless catchphrase becomes a cricketing statistic: a hundred international hundreds. Cricket does have one one true God, who lives alone in his own private heaven; unluckily for desis, he isn't Tendulkar, He is the aforementioned Bradman. Everyone else, from Hobbs to Lara, is part of a supporting pantheon of demi-gods. Tendulkar is among the most distinguished of these but he isn't pre-eminent, not even in this second-echelon host. He isn't even the greatest cricketer of his generation. Muralitharan's career figures as a bowler are more extraordinary than Tendulkar's career figures as a batsman, and if you think Murali's action disqualifies him, Warne makes for a pretty good substitute. And yet, I don't remember (and neither do you) anyone even noticing their thousandth international wickets. That's because they didn't have a billion consuming customers at their backs who shared a nation with them. I believe that Tendulkar has a substantial claim to being considered the greatest Test and one-day batsman of his generation. This is a very large achievement with which he (and we) must be content. We don't need gild this lily with trashy "statistics". To use "a hundred hundreds" to winch Tendulkar up onto a pedestal is to disrespect the great players he has played alongside. Consider Jacques Kallis, who after 16 years at the top has a Test batting average higher than Tendulkar's. He also has 271 Test wickets to Tendulkar's 45, and 169 catches to Tendulkar's 110. If I was a determined South African fan looking for numbers to prove that my man was the best, I could legitimately argue that you would need to merge Sachin Tendulkar with Zaheer Khan to come up with Jacques Kallis. Zaheer, India's best strike bowler for years, has 273 wickets, barely more than Kallis. Do these numbers bear out the claim that Kallis is the more significant player? No they don't, because greatness in cricket can't always be boiled down to numbers - which Tendulkar's cheerleaders would do well to remember. The most worrying thing of all is that the Little Master seems to have drunk his own KoolAid. For the last several innings he has looked weighed down by the pressure of this non-event. Someone should whisper in his ear that he is a great man, that this absurd quest is beneath him. If he does get a hundred the next time he plays a Test innings, he ought to see it as an oblique salute to Bradman, not an ersatz tribute to himself. There is no 100th hundred to be had: the whole, in this case, is less than the sum of its parts.

[bulbul]

I was off by a few runs in my guess. It was Gavaskar: http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/stats/index.html?class=11;filter=advanced;orderby=runs;qualmin1=8000;qualval1=runs;spanmax1=03+Oct+1985;spanval1=span;template=results;type=batting Would be a nice pub trivia question. Or make it second fastest to 10000 international runs which would be Richards.

whay cant people combine First class Centuries , runs , wickets etc...we can see even bigger numbers...mindboggling :two_thumbs_up:

[Magneto]

If you combine FC and List A, Bhajji has more than thousand wickets. :clap:

[bulbul]

Who was Muralis 1000th wicket?

Kartik ?

[Texan]

I was off by a few runs in my guess. It was Gavaskar: http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/stats/index.html?class=11;filter=advanced;orderby=runs;qualmin1=8000;qualval1=runs;spanmax1=03+Oct+1985;spanval1=span;template=results;type=batting Would be a nice pub trivia question. Or make it second fastest to 10000 international runs which would be Richards.

I'm pretty sure nobody would have even noticed his 10,000th international run

[Magneto]

Kartik ?

Meant Muralitharan before that M Kesavan article appeared from nowhere.

[carnish]

see i guess its right to say that warne and murali never had their 1000th international wicket hyped so much as sachin's 100th 100 but the fact that it is taking so long that is extending the hype... had sachin got the century against pak in the WC semis no one would be talking abou it today.... the fact is murali and warne would have gone from 999 to 1000 in probably the same innings or not more than a game and so the hype was not so much.

[Sachinism]

When you are considering S/R even at his best in ODI's he is not a match for a Symonds or a Gilly for example in power hitting on a consistent basis. I am certain even if 20-20 was introduced let us say 20 years back I will put my money on players like Symo' date=' Gilly, Viru, Gayle to be the most destructive players based on S/R and Tendulkar will be a rung below that set.[/quote'] So now he has to have the best strike rate as well? Tendulkar may have scored at a reduced S/R, but would have scored a lot more consistently.

[Guest BossBhai]

-- Removed on request of the user --

[urbestfriend]

Mixing stats from different formats of the game is a very old tradition ... the most famous instance from the past was when Jack Hobbs went past WG's record of FC centuries. Now unless someone wants to argue that FC ( non-Test ) matches are more meaningful and lot "harder" for whatever reasons than the ODI's and hence can be clubbed with Tests ... I rest my case.

:wall: How is comparing FC centuries of two players same as combining ODI and test stats?

[zen]

I guess, in his book they are different formats, much like many would say IPL is a 'different format' than an international T20 and Ranjis a different format than tests :P PS to elaborate: * Ranjis = domestic; tests = international ----> 'different' * T20s = 20 overs; tests = 2 innings ----> 'different' Therefore, per ICF fanboys' logic, 'different' = 'different' and thus can be compared :dontknow:

[Guest BossBhai]

-- Removed on request of the user --

[urbestfriend]

because FC = Tests + Domestic Non test FC matches . So if you think such combination is ok feel free to tell me how a FC century scored in the recent Mumbai vs Odisha match is more valuable and harder than ODI centuries.

Since we have already established that skillsets required to score a century in longet format is different from shorter formats, it is perfectly ok to combine the stats of domestic FC stats + international FC stats, same goes for domestic List A stats + ODI stats.

[The Outsider]

As I said earlier SRT doesn't compromise on the aesthetics of batting. So your attempt to bring in T20 is nothing but a red herring to divert the discussion to a more suitable territory.

Are you saying Tendulkar plays the same way in ODIs as he does in tests - leaves the exact same balls, attacks the exact same deliveries?

But feel free to answer this point from my previous post :

What's there to answer? It's difficult to generalize one way or the other. A number of Tendulkar's test centuries, forget about ODI ones are of much worse quality than his century against Australia for Bombay. Why have you not chosen that as your benchmark instead of Mumbai versus Odhisha?