As Sachin Tendulkar approaches 40, history and stats are stacked against him. But don't count him out yet!

As Sachin Tendulkar approaches his 40^th birthday, voices clamouring for his retirement grow louder. Arunabha Sengupta crunches numbers to find that although most age-related statistics extracted from history of the game are discouraging, one can still hope to master to come good.

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As Sachin Tendulkar marches ahead towards his 40^th birthday and voices demanding his retirement row louder, we find history staunchly against him.

 

Very few batsmen have played beyond 40 with success, and the handful who managed to beat the fetters of age mostly belonged to the leisurely days long gone by.

 

Jack Hobbs did play almost half his career after the dreaded calendar milestone, and managed to increase upon his already staggering average. He played all his cricket between 1908 and 1930 before retiring from Tests at the age of 48.

 

Patsy Hendren also significantly improved his run-making post his 40^th birthday, but he also hailed from the 1920s and 1930s.

 

The most recent batsmen who have had relatively long career tails after 40 have been Geoff Boycott and Graham Gooch. And while Boycott performed decently enough and Gooch did not quite disgrace himself, their figures after forty took quite a beating when compared to their respective days of glory. The same holds true for Bobby Simpson who was rushed back to take charge of the Australian team during the Kerry Packer days.

 

In this context, the last batsman to have matched or bettered his figures after turning 40 was Tom Graveney, and he played his last Test in 1969.

 

Clive Lloyd and Ray Illingworth did improve their showing, but Lloyd played only five matches after his 40th birthday and Illingworth cannot be really classified as a batsman.

 

Batsmen with most runs after 40	Before 40						After 40
	Period	M	Runs	Ave	100	50	Period	M	Runs	Ave	100	50
JB Hobbs (Eng)	1908-1921	34	2970	56.03	7	17	1924-1930	27	2440	58.09	8	11
EH Hendren (Eng)	1920-1929	27	1624	45.11	4	9	1929-1935	24	1901	50.02	3	12
TW Graveney (Eng)	1951-1967	60	3639	44.37	8	14	1967-1969	19	1243	44.39	3	6
G Boycott (Eng)	1964-1980	94	7115	49.40	19	38	1981-1982	14	999	38.42	3	4
EAB Rowan (SA)	1935-1949	16	1046	38.74	1	6	1949-1951	10	919	51.05	2	6
HW Taylor (SA)	1912-1928	29	2093	41.03	5	12	1929-1932	13	843	40.14	2	5
GA Gooch (Eng)	1975-1993	105	8102	43.79	19	43	1993-1995	13	798	33.25	1	3
RB Simpson (Aus)	1957-1968	52	4131	48.60	8	24	1977-1978	10	738	38.84	2	3
AW Nourse (SA)	1902-1914	32	1512	28.52	0	11	1921-1924	13	722	32.81	1	4
FE Woolley (Eng)	1909-1926	52	2562	35.09	4	19	1929-1934	12	721	40.05	1	4
WW Armstrong (Aus)	1902-1912	40	2247	35.66	3	7	1920-1921	10	616	56.00	3	1
WG Grace (Eng)	1880-1888	9	503	38.69	2	0	1888-1899	13	595	28.33	0	5
FR Brown (Eng)	1931-1950	10	254	21.16	0	2	1950-1953	12	480	28.23	0	3
R Illingworth (Eng)	1958-1971	50	1434	22.76	2	3	1972-1973	11	402	25.12	0	2
B Sutcliffe (NZ)	1947-1959	34	2335	40.96	4	12	1965-1965	8	392	35.63	1	3
WR Hammond (Eng)	1927-1939	77	6883	61.45	22	22	1946-1947	8	366	30.50	0	2
W Rhodes (Eng)	1899-1914	47	1965	32.21	2	10	1920-1930	11	360	22.50	0	1
CH Lloyd (WI)	1966-1984	105	7159	46.48	18	37	1984-1985	5	356	50.85	1	2
W Bardsley (Aus)	1909-1921	33	2150	42.15	5	14	1924-1926	8	319	31.90	1	0
P Holmes (Eng)	1926-1926	1	38	19	0	0	1927-1932	6	319	29.00	0	4
CG Macartney (Aus)	1907-1926	32	1830	38.93	5	9	1926-1926	3	301	75.25	2	0
AD Nourse (SA)	1935-1950	29	2659	56.57	8	14	1951-1951	5	301	37.62	1	0

 

On the bowling front there have been some quadragenarian successes, but there is no one with 100 or more wickets in that phase. Clarrie Grimmett leads the list with 96 followed by countryman Bert Ironmonger with 74. And, of course, Sydney Barnes knocked over 49 batsmen in just four matches. All these were again in the distant past, when cricket was relaxed and demands on the body limited. The last man to capture more than 20 wickets past 40 was Eddie Hemmings with 27 scalps at a rather expensive 35.14.

 

40-plus bowlers with more than 20 wickets

 

Bowler	Period	M	Wkts	Ave	Strike Rate
CV Grimmett (Aus)	1931-1936	16	96	21.11	68.4
H Ironmonger (Aus)	1928-1933	14	74	17.97	63.4
SF Barnes (Eng)	1913-1914	4	49	10.93	27.6
AP Freeman (Eng)	1928-1929	6	44	19.29	44.7
LR Gibbs (WI)	1974-1976	13	44	29.90	94.0
FR Brown (Eng)	1950-1953	12	29	26.34	66.4
EE Hemmings (Eng)	1989-1991	8	27	35.14	77.9
W Rhodes (Eng)	1920-1930	11	22	36.81	109.0
GWA Chubb (SA)	1951-1951	5	21	27.47	67.8

 

 

So, history is stacked against Sachin Tendulkar as he moves towards his fourth decade, and the cricket calendar gets more and more demanding. But then, he is known for achievements beyond the ken and imagination of ordinary mortals. No one had scored or contemplated 15,000 Test runs or 51 Test hundreds before he climbed those summits and planted his proud flag. One hundred international centuries were not even glimpsed in wildest dreams. So, all the above statistics taken together is nowhere near enough reason to write him off.

 

In fact, there is one peculiar fact that he can take heart from. If we compute age wise averages of all batsmen taken together, the highest figure is found to be achieved by 39 year olds. While it may sound implausible, we must remember that to be still batting for the country after 39, one has to be a Jack Hobbs or a Don Bradman or a Sachin Tendulkar.

 

The table below lists the age-wise runs, averages, centuries and fifties of all the Test cricketers taken together. As we can see, the highest average is achieved by 39-year-olds.

 

Age	Inn	Runs	Ave	100	50
14	1	27	27.00	0	0
15	2	18	9.00	0	0
16	38	492	16.40	0	3
17	128	2238	21.31	4	9
18	404	6545	19.36	6	30
19	757	14184	21.72	19	63
20	1426	30053	24.67	44	143
21	2418	54301	26.34	90	243
22	3162	67238	24.72	100	306
23	3844	92942	27.82	154	438
24	5130	129315	28.93	244	590
25	5396	141893	30.37	253	636
26	5687	145223	29.20	247	685
27	6222	163459	30.07	294	760
28	5935	160614	30.94	323	735
29	5747	154834	30.92	300	703
30	5130	141422	31.85	276	631
31	4412	127249	32.94	269	551
32	3945	110156	31.91	207	514
33	3292	94934	32.88	189	445
34	2769	76289	31.68	155	366
35	2017	58125	32.93	128	259
36	1323	37330	32.94	74	176
37	1071	31685	34.32	71	154
38	738	21032	32.60	36	103
39	488	15351	36.03	35	70
40	308	8053	29.28	13	36
41	214	5852	31.12	11	31
42	157	3981	28.03	6	15
43	65	1947	33.00	3	8
44	37	660	20.00	0	3
45	51	1302	28.93	2	4
46	25	576	28.80	1	3
47	18	392	24.50	0	3
48	8	85	12.14	0	0
49	8	21	3.50	0	0
50	18	318	21.20	0	1
51	-	-	-	-	-
52	7	51	25.50	0	0

 

(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)