Sachin vs Ricky

Another day, another hundred for Sachin Tendulkar and if centuries against Bangladesh are rather easier to come by - that's five he has made in seven Tests against them - you still have to make the runs. It takes Tendulkar to 45 Test hundreds and 90 in international cricket.
It is the latter that is truly phenomenal: only two batsmen (Ricky Ponting and Sanath Jayasuriya, both with 28 hundreds) have even made half as many ODI centuries as Tendulkar's 45. For consistency in all forms of the game, Tendulkar stands alone. But who will end their career as the most prolific Test batsman?
That was the question being debated over a dinner party on Saturday night. Or at least that is what the male end of my living room was talking about as our wives rolled their eyes and made comments about how dull their husbands had become. In the final reckoning, will SRT or RTP come out on top?
My friend, an Anglo-Indian, had done the maths and, to his annoyance, found Ponting a smidgin ahead - but only just. After 240 Test innings, Ponting has made 11,859 runs with 39 hundreds. At the same point in his career, Tendulkar had made 11,821 runs, also with 39 hundreds. It is too close to call.
If Ponting, who is 18 months younger, scores runs at the same rate over the rest of his career as Tendulkar has since his 240th innings and will continue to score, Punter will be ahead by a whisker. That assumes they end up playing the same number of games.
However, Tendulkar's form in the past two years has been as good as it has ever been. Under MS Dhoni's captaincy, Tendulkar is averaging 73 in Tests and in seven innings this winter, he has scored 461 runs at 92 per innings. There is no sign of him losing his appetite. This gave my friend hope. Ponting has not been in great nick in the past year and a winter average of 51, if continued, will mean that the Australian loses his advantage pretty quickly.
Tendulkar has, therefore, been getting good runs "in the bank". He is now six hundreds ahead of Ponting. My friend reckons that if Tendulkar can get to 50 Test hundreds, which must be a realistic goal (as well as 100 international hundreds) that will be out of reach.
I am not so sure he will get that far. For a start, India have barely any Test cricket to look forward to this year. Two Tests have been hastily organised against South Africa next month, then they have nothing until three Tests at home to New Zealand in November and three more in South Africa early in 2011. That is it for Test cricket until the 2011 World Cup and many suspect that Tendulkar would bow out after that. There would be few better ways to end your career than a World Cup final in your home city.
If Tendulkar does stop in spring 2011, that would mean that he has eight more Tests in which to establish an unbeatable mark. Taking the average number of runs he has scored per Test innings and average number of innings per Test, he would end up with 13,816 runs and, perhaps, only 47 hundreds. OK, so that doesn't take into account good (or bad) form, but it is a decent rule of thumb.
That would give him a buffer of 1,957 runs and eight hundreds over where Ponting is now. How many games would Ponting need to play to pass that? Well, again taking into account the average runs he scores per innings, I reckon Ponting would need to play another 21 Tests to pass him in terms of runs but 29 Tests to match those 47 hundreds.
Australia are due to play 11 Tests before the 2011 World Cup, which would give us an indication of whether Ponting is on track. They are then due to play a whopping 17 Tests by April 2012, when the ICC's Future Tours Programme comes to an end. And Ponting is thought to be keen on continuing until the 2013 Ashes.
All of which suggests that if Tendulkar does decide to leave the stage after the next World Cup, there will be enough chances for Ponting to break his records within a year. Then again, maybe Ravi Bopara will beat them both.