No matter how much is being said about Sachin these days, I (like half of India) still stay hungry for more and more articles and quotes and stories and anecdotes and analysis and the list goes on.

The fact that Sachin is once-in-a-lifetime batting phenomenon is already established. Any further records might just serve an academic purpose. Still many of us have a wish-list for him to achieve before he retires.

His record of most international runs looks almost untouchable. Over 30k runs and still going strong. But there is an acknowledgeable threat from Ricky Ponting as a contender to end up with more Test runs than him. Right now Ponting is nearly one and a half thousand runs behind Sachin. Rahul Dravid is just three hundred runs short of Ponting.

However, a look at the international cricket calendar from now till 2010 end leaves an Indian fan worried. India is going to play only 10 Test matches while Australia is going to play 18 Test matches (if one includes all The Ashes matches). So by 2011, Ponting would leave Dravid far behind and if one goes by averages, he would be around 600 runs short of Sachin. These batsmen score nearly 1000 runs an year, which means that if Ponting’s career outlasts that of Sachin even by less than a year, Ponting might very well end up with the record.

Ponting is about a year and a half younger and started playing international cricket much later which implies that he is in a good position to outlast Sachin. Of course there are various other factors; some would say that Australians don’t keep a player in the team simply to allow him to create a record (like India is accused of playing Kapil Dev in his last matches). But right now, none of the batsmen are a burden on team by any distance. All we can wish right now is that BCCI schedules more Test matches in Indian calendar.

Coming to Sachin’s other records now. He has 88 centuries and 142 half centuries. He has scored 5 centuries in 2008 and 5 in 2009 until mid November. We would need him to play at least for a couple of years more to get to the century of centuries. Even if 100 centuries look difficult, he would definitely end up with 150 half centuries by 2011 World cup. Not even Ponting looks probable to better this tally.

Would Sachin score a triple hundred before he retires? The chances are less. All of the batsmen who have scored a triple century either open the innings of bat one-down. Scoring a triple century needs a combination of prime form, luck and supporting conditions. If the pitch and conditions are good, chances are that top three batsmen would already have scored a lot of runs and a team would rather declare or get all-out before the two-down batsman scores triple hundred. I would put Rahul’s or Ponting’s chances higher than that of Sachin to get a triple hundred.

If you look closely at the statistics of highest scoring batsmen, you would notice that Sachin’s proportion of ODI runs is much higher than Test runs when compared to others. Again, there are reasons, like India plays higher percentage of ODIs than other nations. But the most important reason probably is that Sachin opens in ODI while comes two-down in Tests. Contrast that with Ponting who always bats one-down or Brian Lara who used to bat one-down in Test and two-down in ODIs. Naturally Lara has more Test runs than ODI. The data for four of the batsmen discussed is at the end of the article.

The batting position also explains why Sachin is so far ahead in ODI. His records in ODI might never get broken. You would need an extraordinarily gifted individual to bat consistently for over 20 years and that too as an opener. I don’t think I would live long enough to see that happening again. But I would keep watching the old videos to relive the glory days again and again.

Sachin Tendulkar:
Tests Runs: 12877
ODI Runs: 17178

Ricky Ponting:
Tests Runs: 11345
ODI Runs: 12311

Rahul Dravid:
Tests Runs: 11038
ODI Runs: 10765

Brian Lara:
Test Runs: 11953
ODI Runs: 10405