Lies, damn lies and ICC all time great list
Sachin Tendulkar is urchined from the all time great list but Hayden has his hay day. On sheer performance comparison, Sachin should have outranked Hayden in the list.
41 Test Hundreds, 42 ODI hundreds, 68 first class hundreds, 141 fifty plus scores (Test and ODI put together), 154 ODI wickets, 42 test wickets, 100 test catches, 126 ODI catches, 57 ODI Player of the match awards (latest came in May 2008 against Australia in Australia when Tendulkar was well into his 19th year in International cricket), 11 man of the match awards in tests (latest in Jan 2008 against Australia in Adelaide).
An enviable average of 53 after so many years of test cricket despite all those injuries, playing under tremendous pressure due to the high expectations of a nation of atleast half a billion cricket crazy people, do not probably count when it comes to entering the all time great list.
It is beyond my imagination why such a consistent performance was just NOT enough for Tendulkar to be ranked among the top 10 of all time greats.
I understand that there is some points system on which the ranking has been worked out and Sachin didn’t make the grade due to that. Isn’t pointless if the point system takes into flashes but not consistent performance?
On a comparison, I find that, Mathew Hayden, scored 20 of his 30 hundreds in Australia and 10 hundreds outside of his home country, a ratio of 2/3rd to 1/3rd in a career that spread over 14 years of cricket in which three years were in oblivion having failed perform well after the first seven test matches.
Against this, Sachin Tendulkar scored 18 of his 100s at home and the rest were away 100s. Some one can say Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangaladesh and India are almost same terrain. Then I will have to counter with the centuries scored by Hayden against England and New Zealand with whom Australia plays more often.
The following comparison table proves that Hayden’s inclusion at the top is as much wrong as Sachin’s exclusion from there.
They say there are lies, damn lies and statistics. But, on this occasion, I would think, statistics didn’t lie but the ICC list does.
| Parameter | Tendulkar | Hayden |
| Debut | 1989 | 1994 |
| Years of continuous test cricket | 19 | 9 |
| Total years of test cricket | 19 | 12 |
| Years of no test cricket since debut | None | 3 |
| Hundreds | 41 | 30 |
| Average | 53.93 | 50.73 |
| Hundreds at home | 18 | 20 |
| Ratio of home hundreds | 44% | 67% |
| Wickets | 42 | None |
| Tests in the 1990s | 73 | 7 |
| Average in the 1990s | 56.7 | 21.7 |
| 100s in the 1990s | 22 | 1 |
| Tests in the 2000s | 87 | 96 |
| Average in the 2000s | 51.53 | 52.93 |
| 100s in the 2000s | 19 | 29 |
| Man of the match awards | 11 | 10 |
| Last MoM award | Jan-08 | Dec-07 |
| Number of catches | 100 | 128 |
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I went through that list too. It isn’t just Sachin who didn’t make it to that list!So does Brain Lara, Allan Border et al. On the other hand you had Sangakkara and Md. Yousuf making into the list. The bowlers list was a similar farce too. Dale Steyn is ahead of Akram, Donald. Warne is at 15. Kumble at 43. Come on, they must be kidding.
I bet that they aren’t in their right frame of mind!
Ram,
I just took one sample as Sachin is dear to all of us and he was praised by none less than The Cricket God Sir Donald Bradman.
I read this interesting post on this farce: http://tcwj.blogspot.com/2009/01/fools-rule-game-from-dubai-roost.html
Fantastic work that Sam. ICC have painted themselves in vivid colours…there is no escape for them now…they cannot be missed for what they really are anymore…they have declared themselves to be fools of the nth degree.
The very illogical thought of picking a peak year to represent an entire career and base an all time rating system on it itself suggests that they are either stupid and belong to the corner of the classroom with duncecaps on, or lazy and do not care to exercise a single neuron other than what’s required to summon some statistic out of a hat, or dastardly uncaring about the game to have made such a mockery of those who played it, watching it and supported it.
This entire set of CEOs and CFOs and whatever Os more are there need to be booted out forwith…if this were an investment company/bank it might have translated into a ponzi scam.
It is meant to be about consistent performance over a year or so. Comparing this to an all-time great list is like comparing a “most runs scored in a year” list to career totals.
This is why the ICC doesn’t actually call it an “all-time great list”. It looks like they didn’t think about how it would be publicised and interpreted.
Jonathan,
Thanks for your comment. By now ICC must be aware that it is seen as an “all time great list”. It will always hurt fans of great cricketers if they find such illogical rankings done and published. The timing was also so questionable. Why was it released just when Hayden retired?
Hi Triplicani,
In fact I was about to write a very strong blog on this ICC rating. The same old saying needs to be repeated here (Bunch of Jokers). Seriously all of them should be jokers. We lost the due credit as soon as Gavaskar came out of the ICC Management.
Your analysis says it all. If all the ratings were just based on the peak performances, then there is no point in talking about more than 10 players. Because in a given point of time hardly four teams are playing cricket and one can easily pick up 10 players out of it.
Absolutely. All such “All time great” rankings should be based on career performances and not peak performances.
Any person who would have read it may have laughed.
It is a good list and pretty good apart from being achronistic.
The List should have been title, ICC top 50 (between 1950-1970)
Apart from that (Tendulkar) no bowler in top Twenty, Sobers is there coz of batting may be who knows.
I think Vass summed it up beautifully.
Tendulkar doesn’t need to be rated.
Tarun,
I also thought so. Whether or not someone puts players like Sachin in the all time great list, he will certainly occupy all slots, 1 to 10, if a ranking is made by any die hard Indian cricket fan. As far as I am concerned, ranking for other players start after “Ten”dulkar.
I read a question of Sri Adi Shankaracharya to explain truth “will the sky still be blue, if no one is there to see”. He meant that truth will be truth irrespective of whether someone acknowledges it. Thus, Sachin is certainly the greatest after The Cricket God Sir Donald Bradman, irrespective of whether people accept this truth or not.
With all due respect to hayden, Sachin is way-ahead. The inherent drawback of comparison of plain statistics is that, they dont take into the non-numerical factors. Its a fact that, in the last 10-12 years, hayden was the most successful and consistent player in the world cricket. And australia have been dominating the world cricket for a longtime and they did dominate during the aforementioned period mainly beacuse of their quality bowling attack. The period of hayden was definitely dominated by aussie bowlers and there were very few petrifying non-aussie quality bowlers. These factors are unrevealed when one talks about just statistics.
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