Who is better?

Who is better? Tendulkar, Ponting or Kallis?

By Ashok H Mittal on January 9, 2011 ahmittal@gmail.com

From time to time, there have been several articles written comparing Tendulkar to Bradman, Tendulkar to Ponting etc. This has been a common exercise and a favorite pastime of many experts and analysts over the years. While a section of experts and analysts will argue one who has made the most runs, scored more centuries, has a higher average etc as yardsticks to decide who is better, an another section of experts and analysts argue how effective a player has been in getting a team to win to be more important yardstick for comparison.

Let’s start with overall record of three of the perhaps best contemporary cricketers who each have done fabulously for their country and the world of cricket, and are compared at times – Tendulkar, Ponting and Kallis.

No one can argue the greatness of any of these three players. Based on a total number of runs scored, 14,692 to date, number of centuries, 51, and half centuries, 59, Tendulkar is a better player with much longer playing record than Ponting or Kallis. Kallis however does edge ahead a little with a career average of 57.43 over Tendulkar’s 56.94. Just to be fair, here though, of the contemporaries, Dravid, who has currently scored more runs than Kallis, has been kept out to keep the scope of comparison this among the three players – Tendulkar, Ponting and Kallis. A table at the bottom gives you an opportunity to analyze Dravid if you so choose.

Most experts, analysts and players do not have a problem giving the top prize to Tendulkar here.

Right after the first test against South Africa in the current series where Tendulkar scored a century, the daggers supposedly had come out for his effort, like in the past – Another century where India lost! I remember the post match analysis in several sections, where Dhoni and others mentioned, how important it was for India to score 459 in their second inning of the match. As most experts agree, the game at the highest level is played as much in minds as it is on the field. This effort let India walk away with their heads held a bit higher, giving them a comfort in a big loss, that there is a hope. It gave them a belief that they are good enough to fight and win. They gave themselves a chance to pick themselves up and fight on with their life. Without that century, disregarding that it was a personal milestone and a cricketing history that Tendulkar scored his 50^th century, India could well have been out for may be around 300. It still would have been a loss, but the important thing is where would have India found the courage to pick themselves up, believe in themselves and go on to fight and win the next one? How do you measure this effort in terms of stats or how can you label a century in a drawn or a lost test as worthless or just for records, like in this case?

A section of experts and analysts may not discredit this completely, yet they would argue their case that isn’t it perhaps better that a player contributes more to the success or purely in this case matches won by the country and relegate the overall stats for the record books instead? I have had a similar argument with my room mate in 1986 while comparing Gavaskar and Vishwanath where he argued furiously as to why Vishwanath was better than Gavaskar even though most all batting records belonged to Gavaskar at the time. More on this later, and coming to the players under discussion here, their argument is Ponting has scored 28 centuries as compared to Tendulkar’s 20 centuries and Kallis’s 19 centuries in their respective countries wins. You can’t really argue against that fact. Can you?

However, this forced me to really take this argument and analyze it further and see if really that is the way to compare them. The first thought that occurred to me is: Is really the century a bottom line parameter in case of a batsman’s contribution to winning a game? Of course, not. Many a games in the subcontinent are where you are winning in the fourth inning by scoring less than 200-250 runs, chances of one scoring a century diminishes. I used the information available on Statsguru at cricinfo.com to analyze this further. Following table describes contribution by these players when they were part of the winning test team for their countries. Here is what I found:

Tendulkar has in his career been part of 61 matches won by India. In comparison, Kallis has been a part of a winning South African team 69 times and Ponting 99 times. Cricket being a team game, we can not credit Ponting or Kallis for their higher wins. Having said that, the further analysis of the data reveals a very interesting story. In the matches won by their countries when these players have been part of their respective teams, Tendulkar has a much higher average of 67.56 runs than Ponting’s 59.47. In fact, Kallis, behind Tendulkar, has been much better than Ponting as well. Further, please look at the last three columns. Even though Ponting has more centuries in wining games, Tendulkar has scored a century every 4.85 winning match innings as compared to Ponting making a century every 5.82 wining match innings. Tendulkar has been out on zero only 3.28% times as opposed to Ponting’s 7.07%, more than double. Staying not out conveys how many times have you seen your country through to the win or contributed to the max you could in the earlier inning. Again here, Tendulkar has been more times not out (percent times not out as compared to innings played) than Ponting. However, Kallis has in this particular case done better than Tendulkar.

Consider an another information: The table below shows stats for India, South Africa and Australia for matches they won when Tendulkar, Kallis and Tendulkar were part of the winning team respectively.

In the matches that India won with Tendulkar in the team, Australia won with Ponting in the team and South Africa won with Kallis in the team, who scored more runs of their team total or scored more centuries overall? No prize for guessing it! Tendulkar again! He scored more runs – a 16.63% of the total runs scored by India in these matches as compared to Ponting scoring a 14.94% of his team total. Kallis once again is closer to Tendulkar here than Ponting. Coming back to centuries, again, in terms of percentage of total centuries scored by the team in those winning matches, Tendulkar is way ahead by close to 10% more than Ponting. Kallis comes second again.

This analysis underscores a couple of very interesting points- Tendulkar is better, period. Not that this needed affirmation, but I hope the group that believes contribution of a player in winning matches is more important can now put their apprehensions aside and agree or take comfort in the fact that even stats suggest that Tendulkar is better.

What is a surprise to me in this analysis is that while the argument always has been who is better - Tendulkar or Ponting, it is actually Kallis who is a rather close second, way ahead of Ponting.

PS: For my room mate, Chandra, you may find the following interesting, and by the way I can have this argument with you all over again; or may be you did have a point a bit J The table below describes contributions of Gavaskar and Vishwanath in matches that India won and they were part of the winning team individually.

PPS: For guys who after reading this may be wondering about our very very special cricketer VVS Laxman, may like to analyze this as well. Nothing to take away from our very special cricketer, however ignore The Wall, Mr. Rahul Dravid, only at your own peril. The table below compares contributions of Tendulkar, Dravid, Laxman and Ganguly in matches that India won and they were part of the winning team individually.