Tag Archives: Sachin Tendulkar

Wisden Almanack on Twitter; breaking ground for a whole new set of statistics

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Wisden Almanack, “exhaustive chronicler of the best-loved game”, opened an account on Twitter last week:

Cricket’s bible will probably start including Twitter-stats as of next year: most followers, most tweets, average per day, most retweets, most replies, etcetera.

I’m guessing that Sachin Tendulkar could get his hands on a few of these records as well.

Multiplying Bradman’s career stats

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With Tendulkar seemingly setting a new record with every innings he plays, you might almost be excused to believe he is the greatest batsman ever.

Almost.

Tendulkar played 171 Test matches so far (and he’ll probably be playing his 200th as well) and is probably the best of his generation. But his figures – and those of everyone else – pale in comparison with those of Donald Bradman, who only played 52 matches.

The proof is in the following table. It shows Bradman’s current figures and his figures if he had played as much games as modern age batsmen (about 2 or 3 times more) and those of the modern greats Tendulkar, Ponting and Lara:

Player Mat Inns Runs 50 100 200s 300s
Bradman 52 80 6996 13 29 12 2
Bradman x 2 104 160 13992 26 58 24 4
Bradman x 3 156 240 20988 39 87 36 6
Tendulkar 171 280 14240 58 49 6 0
Ponting 148 251 12250 55 39 5 0
Lara 131 232 11953 48 34 9 2

Bradman tops every stat, except making fifties.

Every time I take a closer look at Bradman’s statistics they astonish me. The man was mindblowing good.

Picking a captain for Cricinfo’s all-time World XI

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Cricinfo completed its selection for an all-time World XI.

I have no complaints about the final eleven, but Cricinfo has left one question unanswered: who should captain the side?

The World XI combines some of the greatest players in history, with ego’s to match. It would require someone special to earn the respect of these players and get them playing as a team.

The World XI: Jack Hobbs, Len Hutton, Don Bradman, Sachin Tendulkar, Viv Richards, Garry Sobers, Adam Gilchrist, Malcolm Marshall, Shane Warne, Wasim Akram, Dennis Lillee.

So who to pick as captain?

Adam Gilchrist and Sachin Tendulkar are both out of the question. They seem too gentle to captain this team.

And as a rule, I don’t think fast bowlers should captain any side, so that is another three out of the question.

Garry Sobers has enough on his plate as the team’s allrounder and Jack Hobbs never captained his county of country, ruling him out too.

So that leaves me with Len Hutton, Don Bradman, Viv Richards and Shane Warne as possible captains. Four formidable cricketers.

The most exciting choice would be to pick Warne (“the greatest captain Australia never had”), but I am not sure he is the man to lead this eleven.

Warne’s captaincy is about being daring and inventive. Great when your the underdog, but the World XI is just about dominating the opposition into submission.

That’s something you could leave up to Richards, who never lost a Test series as captain of the West Indies and won the first two editions of the World Cup. And Richards is a man who knows how to handle fast bowlers off course.

But he won’t be my pick for captaining the World XI.

And neither will Hutton, despite his cunning captaincy of England on some of the hardest tours ever in Australia en West Indies, leading England to victories there.

Lets be honest. There really is only one man fit to captain the all-time World XI. The greatest cricketer ever: Donald Bradman.

In every sense a world beater, both as batsman and captain, Bradman is the natural leader for the all-time World XI.

Right?

The Twitter all-time XI

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  1. Graeme Smith (South Africa) – http://twitter.com/GraemeSmith49
  2. Virender Sehwag (India) – http://twitter.com/sehwagvirender
  3. * Michael Vaughan (England) – http://twitter.com/VaughanCricket
  4. Sachin Tendulkar (India) – http://twitter.com/sachin_rt
  5. Kevin Pietersen (England) – http://twitter.com/kevinpp24
  6. † Mark Boucher (South Africa) – http://twitter.com/markb46
  7. Graeme Swann (England) – http://twitter.com/swannyg66
  8. Shane Warne (Australia) – http://twitter.com/warne888
  9. Morne Morkel (South Africa) – http://twitter.com/mornemorkel65
  10. James Anderson (England) – http://twitter.com/jimmyanderson9
  11. Dale Steyn (South Africa) - http://twitter.com/DaleSteyn62

What do you think? An impressive bunch, are they not?

Well, off course you don’t agree, so let me know how wrong I am and post your own all-time XI in the comments. ;)

Are there any rules? Just one. I only choose between players who are active Twitterers. That’s all. Every player who has not posted a Tweet in the last month or so is no longer available for the Twitter all-time XI.

Everybody clear on that? Right, now give me your elevens!