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Myth Busting — did Sachin Tendulkar’s rate of scoring become slower in the second half of his career?

In later years, one could perhaps get a beer with an easier mind while he was at the crease.

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Sachin Tendulkar in his youth (left) and toward the end of his career © Getty Images
Sachin Tendulkar in his youth (left) and toward the end of his career © Getty Images

Sachin Tendulkar enjoyed two periods of sublime greatness — one a prolonged phase stretching across a decade from the early 1990s, and the latter a magical four years from 2007 to 2011. However, the two Tendulkars were different. The earlier version was dominating, attacking, audacious; the latter, safe, solid and accumulating. At least that is the perception. Arunabha Sengupta crunches numbers to find out whether Tendulkar’s second period of greatness really saw him score at a slower rate.

We remember the 1990s. When Sachin Tendulkar was often the one-man army, especially on foreign pitches, standing alone and tall with the rest of the batting crumbling around him.

What strikes us about that period is the way Tendulkar went about the task of getting the runs, snatching them from the attacks that most often held his comrades at ransom. He counter-attacked. He dominated. He pulverised the bowling.

The champion carried on in the same vein till well into the 2000s. True, a lot of muscle had been added in the middle order by then, but even so it was he who had to play single handed rescuing gems ever so often.

Runs were amassed across lands from Cape Town to Bloemfontein, from Perth to Melbourne.

And after that came the niggles, the serious injuries, the tennis elbow and a period of prolonged struggle.

Ian Chappell came up with his infamous ‘mirror on the wall’ prophecy.

And the master roared back to go through a dream phase, an unparalleled second wind of brilliance. During this phase, his batting was touched by more than greatness of talent — it was lit up by the mastery that comes through enlightenment.

Yet, there was a difference. The destroyer of attacks was gone. We saw the compiler of runs. The impetuousness laden brilliance of youth had been replaced by the sheen of perfection gleaned through experience.

The class and the results were never in question. However, we heard the many many followers of the game, including several experts, voice that he was no longer the same attacking batsman. He did not score as quickly as he did when he was the young Sachin Tendulkar. He did not devastate attacks.

It was true to an extent.

The sensational pulls were unfurled less and less, the preference was for the upper cut laced with economy of motion. The thundering drives down the line and on the up were replaced by neat deflections. He became partial to the area square of the wicket rather than the V down the ground. As Dennis Amiss told me in an interview, “Down the years, he probably he did not come at the ball quite so much, especially early on in the innings. He stayed back in his crease a bit more, and waited and watched.”

Yes, it certainly looked less audacious. In the later years, one could perhaps go and get a beer with an easier mind while Tendulkar was at the crease.

But was he any less attacking? Did his rate of scoring become slower than earlier?

As in so many things with cricket, our perceptions deceive us. We find that during the two best phases of his career — one long stretch as a young man, and the second divine period in his cricketing middle age — Tendulkar’s rate of scoring showed negligible variation.

He gathered runs in a less adventurous manner, the risks were cut down, but that did not affect the rate of scoring at all.

We can break up Tendulkar’s career into five parts.

  • The initial period: from his debut to the end of the South African odyssey in 1992-93
  • The incredibly long period of greatness without a peer: from the home series against England in 1992-93 to the Pakistan tour of 2003-04
  • The phase afflicted with tennis elbow and other injuries : 2004-2007
  • The second wind of greatness: 2007 to the 2011 World Cup
  • The post-2011 World Cup slump.

If we look at the figures over these periods, we find that the slump during 2004 to 2006-7 did pull down both the average and strike rate, but the slowest he batted in his career was during his first four years in the game — in both formats.

In Tests he scored at a strike rate of 47.89 during his first 21 Tests.

During his first great period over 92 Tests he averaged an incredible 61.57 and had a strike rate of 55.44.

And the second great phase saw him score at an even higher average of 63.87 while his strike rate went down by less than 0.5 runs per hundred balls.

Tendulkar in Tests

T

R

Ave

SR

100s

50s

till Jan 1993

21

1158

38.60

47.89

4

5

Jan 1993 to 2003-04

93

8312

61.57

55.44

29

32

2004-2006-07

21

1198

39.93

49.13

2

6

2007-2011 WC

42

4024

63.87

54.97

16

16

post 2011 WC

23

1229

32.34

53.62

0

9

If we look at the ODIs, once again the analysis of corresponding periods are revealing. While he was definitely prolific and played a lot more during his decade of greatness from 1993 to 2004, his second phase of genius shows both a better average and strike rate.

Once again the slowest he played was in his formative years, when he had not discovered himself in the role of an opener.

Tendulkar in ODIs

M

R

Ave

SR

C

F

till Jan 1993

47

1360

33.17

74.60

0

11

Jan 1993 to 2003-04

287

11795

46.62

88.07

37

55

2004-2006-07

51

1713

38.93

80.04

4

11

2007-2011 WC

69

3264

51.00

89.10

7

18

post 2011 WC

10

315

31.50

81.39

1

1

Hence, the belief that he became less attacking and slowed down with focus on accumulation is nothing but an error of perception. The way he got his runs changed. There was also Virender Sehwag playing alongside him, another factor that probably made him look a more sedate batsman in comparison.

But, the scoring rate did not undergo any dip at all. It remains another of the many, many myths that riddle the perceptions of cricket followers.

(Arunabha Sengupta is a cricket historian and Chief Cricket Writer at CricketCountry. He writes about the history and the romance of the game, punctuated often by opinions about modern day cricket, while his post-graduate degree in statistics peeps through in occasional analytical pieces. The author of three novels, he can be followed on Twitter at http://twitter.com/senantix)

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