A comparision of statistics

Well, I really like to compare the statistics of Ponting, Lara and Tendulkar. Ponting, being the youngest has 193 innings. Lets see Lara and Tendulkar when they had 193 innings and compare the three.

Tendulkar had 9879 runs at an average of 57.43 with 34 hundreds, 45 fifties and 21 not outs.

Lara had 9993 runs at an average of 53.43 with 26 hundreds, 45 fifties and 6 not outs.

Now watch how close Ponting is to these two, specially Tendulkar.

Ponting has 9776 runs at an average of 58.53, with 34 hundreds, 39 fifties and 26 not outs.

He is just a hundred runs or so from the two and will need 224 runs in his next two innings if he wants to equal Lara and Tendulkar's record of making 10000 runs in 195 innings. Thats quite unlikely. Incidentally, however, Tendulkar was around the same age when he played 193 innings. So Ponting should run Tendulkar close in making most runs. It all depends no who retires when.

In one days of course, I thought Tendulkar is the undisputed master. Ponting can't even come close. But he manages to come closer than I thought.

Tendulkar had 11, 491 at 44.43 after 286

Ponting has 11, 023 at 43.91

Of course, his recent batting slump hasn't helped or if he had batted in this series as he normally does he would have been 11, 200. But he still is pretty close. Tendulkar, by the way had 33 hundreds by then whereas Ponting has 26, his fifty conversion rate isn't as good. In Tests, he has a pretty good chance of beating Tendulkar. In ODI's Tendulkar had played 286 innings by July 2002, which is almost 6 years back, Ponting is 2 years younger than him, so he'll have to play atleast 4 years more than Tendulkar. At a Ponting fan's most optimistic, Tendulkar will retire in a year or so, but I doubt Ponting will stick around in ODI's till 40.

So Tendulkar's ODI record remains as unbreakable as Murali's 723 and both Murali and Tendulkar aren't even finished yet.