ICC defends Tendulkar's low rating

                  

Eyebrows were raised when the all-time International Cricket Council (ICC) Test player rankings (as of January 14, 2009) were released. The highest run-getter in both formats - Test and ODI - Sachin Tendulkar has been placed at 26th and 12th respectively in these newly updated rankings.

Tendulkar, who surpassed Brian Lara to become the highest run-getter in Test cricket is placed way down at number 26 in the ICC's all-time ratings for Test batsmen. Contemporary batsmen such as Kevin Pietersen, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Brian Lara, Matthew Hayden, Ricky Ponting, Kumar Sangakkara and Jacques Kallis are all ahead of Tendulkar.

Sunil Gavaskar is the only Indian who features in the top twenty list. This, despite the fact that are three batsmen - Tendulkar, Dravid and Gavaskar - who have scored more than 10,000 runs in Test cricket.

This has obviously not gone down too well with the entire cricketing fraternity. 

Here is ICC's reaction to this hot debate - released on Thursday. Take a look:-

Tall peaks are not always better than long plateaus as true greatness must include protracted excellence

Matthew Hayden’s position of 10th and 18th in the all-time Test and ODI ICC Player Rankings for batsmen is an impressive achievement by anyone’s standards but this does not necessarily mean he is the 10th-best Test batsman or 18th-best ODI batsman in the history of the game.

The rankings give an indication of how players peaked during their careers but do not give a full picture of those players’ level of consistency or longevity in the game.

For example, a batsman or a bowler who averages around 700 ratings points for most of his career apart from a purple patch where he shoots up to 900 points before dropping down again may be ranked higher on the all-time ratings.

But that does not mean he should necessarily be considered to be better than a player who hovered around the 850-point mark for his entire career.

The ICC Player Rankings are a great way to compare the performances of players but the all-time list of highest-rated players does not by itself rank those players in terms of true greatness.

For that reason some players, who are considered by most observers of the game to be truly great, such as Brian Lara, Sachin Tendulkar, Wally Hammond, Greg Chappell and others, do not feature in the top 20 in the all-time high ratings.

The “best-ever ratings” are effectively snapshots of greatness. When it comes to judging a player’s greatness over his career, it’s necessary to look at his entire graph rather than his peak. It’s not so much how high a player soars as how long he stays there.

If you think of a player’s graph as a mountain, a high, long plateau could be worth more than a single sky-scraping peak.

Hence Tendulkar would be deemed greater than most other players despite having a lower peak. One way of assessing a player would be to calculate his “average rating” over his career though of course this could penalise a player whose long career included a slow start. So, was Hayden better than Chappell? How does Lara fare against Tendulkar? It’s up to everyone to make their own judgment by comparing graphs, or by other more subjective means. This debate may run and run.