Indian batting maestro, Sachin Tendulkar, despite hanging up his boots seven years back, remains at the summit of highest runs scored in international cricket.
Master Blaster’s enormous tally of 34,357 seems like light years away for the batsmen to surpass for the current generation of cricketers. Also, Sachin has another outrageous tally of hundred hundreds in international cricket.
However, one batsman who is making rapid strides in world cricket, and is earmarked to break Sachin’s record is Indian captain Virat Kohli.
For any batsmen, to even reach somewhere around Tendulkar’s tally of runs remained unfathomable. Kohli, with 21,901 runs already in his career, and some more years left in the tank should surpass Sachin’s tally in the future.
This race has given birth to the comparison between the greats produced by Indian cricket – one from the past and the other from the present.
Moreover, former Pakistan speedster, Shoaib Akhtar, who has shared the field with Sachin several times in his glittering career, suggested that Tendulkar would have scored ‘1,30,000’ runs in career if played in the current era.
“Tendulkar batted in the toughest era of cricket. If he had to get the chance now, he may hit more than 1.30 lakh runs. So, it’s not good to make a comparison between Sachin and Kohli,” Akhtar told Cricket Pakistan.
It is never fair to compare greats of two different eras, and more so in the ever-evolving game called cricket.
Batsmen have had a greater advantage over the bowlers with the advent of T20 cricket. Bowlers are forced to play with two new balls at both ends. Also, the boundaries have grown shorter, while willows have become stronger and the pitches have gone flatter.
Further, there are only limited quality bowlers available currently in world cricket. This was not the case when Sachin played. The Mumbaikar against the likes of Courtney Walsh, Allan Donald, Wasim Akram, Glenn McGrath and many others.
