“Another Sachin century, another match India couldn’t win…” is there merit in that statistic.

“Once I was on a night train winding down from Simla to Kalka that stopped halfway for refreshments at a station lit by flaming torches. On a small television screen wreathed in cigarette smoke in the corner of the dining room Tendulkar was batting in a match in Mumbai. No one moved or spoke or looked away. The train was delayed by 20 minutes. Not until Tendulkar was out could the world resume its normal timetables and rhythms”

 (The above quote is by Greg Baum is a writer with the Melbourne Age)

            I wonder if there is any game, that evokes passion, more or similar  than cricket in India. The game crosses all barriers embedded in the Indian society, and for a brief span of 6 hrs we see a unified India. I realized that, over the period,Cricket has become an inherent part of  Indian culture, etched in to the indian way of life and is an important part of everyday life like the curries, the saffron, the tikka and gol guppas. it evokes same passions as religions and socio-economic conditions do in different parts of the world. It brings in emotions that even local politics or politicians can compete with, that is cricket in india. I  Love the game…but this is not what I want to discuss.

         The world cup match between England and India ended in a draw after Indians and the English did a trapeze show on the field each going up then falling down at speeds that would awe anyone in a circus. While it was by sheer luck that both teams managed a draw it was anyone’s game. Both played well and both goofed up real bad, but it in middle of all this excitement was a small Facebook entry from a very dear friend “Another Sachin century, another match India couldn’t win…” and that made me think is there any merit in that ….. This is find out if there is any

 

So I went on to the stats guru of cricinfo and got the basic data on Sachin:

Match Status	Mat	Inns	NO	Runs	HS	Ave	BF	SR	100	50	0
Won matches	224	221	34	10789	200*	57.69	11915	90.54	33	56	8
Lost Matches	194	194	2	6319	175	32.91	7941	79.57	12	35	11
draw/no result	28	20	5	669	120	44.6	744	89.91	2	2	1
Total	446	435	41	17777	200*	45.11	20600	86.29	47	93	20

  Win percentage:

Match Status	Mat	Inns	NO	Runs
Won matches	50%	51%	83%	61%
Lost Matches	43%	45%	5%	36%
draw/no result	6%	5%	12%	4%

 

Sachin seem to have won 50% of the matches that he has played and about 51% of the innings that he has actually played. Well that does not seem to be great. We can compare it overall Indian team for the period India has played 598 matches and won 303 matches during the same period so that is about 50% win percentage. But the interesting snippet is out of the 598 matches that India played in the last 20 years Sachin has played in 75% of the matches. That itself is no mean feat.

 Not out:

Sachin remains not out about 1/10 games. But considering that he opens the game it is special ask of any batsman. But the interesting fact is if we ignore the games that were drawn or abandoned if a Sachin remains not out then there is a 95% chance that India will win the game.

Total Runs:

61% of his runs came from the matches that India has won. His average in the matches that India has won is a whopping 57.7 and the total runs that he has made in the games that we have won are more than 10,000 runs. The closest next is Ganguly whose contribution in matches that we have won is around 6800 runs with an average of 55

Run Rate

Let’s look at this stat

Match Status	Inns Played	Runs	Balls Faced	Ball faced per inning	Avg. no of overs played per inning	batting average	Run rate
Won matches	221	10789	11915	54	8.99	57.69	6.42
Lost Matches	194	6319	7941	41	6.82	32.91	4.82
draw/no result	20	669	744	37	6.20	44.6	7.19
Total	435	17777	20600	47	7.89	45.11	5.72

 From the above stat, in the matches that India won, Sachin maintains an average of 6.4 runs per over compared to 4.8 in the matches that India has lost.

 Now to the main question. Is there a correlation between his centuries and India to win?

Match Status	100’s	%
Won matches	33	70%
Lost Matches	12	26%
draw/no result	2	4%
Total	47

 70% of Sachin’s centuries came in the games that India has won.  He would hit a century every six matches that India won and one in every 12 matches that India lost.  So I guess Sachin centuries contributed to wins more than it contributed to losses if we compare with his general average of 50% wins in his career.

While this is no conclusive research and can be debated by pure statisticians regarding my methodology or the tools that I have used or not used, it would not make any major difference. He is no god and cricket is no religion but If Ian Botham can be seen as the Errol Flynn of cricket, or Viv Richards as the Martin Luther King, or Shane Warne as the Marilyn Monroe, or Muttiah Muralitharan as the hobbit, Tendulkar is surely the game’s secular saint. For twenty years he has been delivering what he has destined to do. Right from the beginning, he appeared to be touched by divinity. He came among us as a boy-god, unannounced. He was 16 and was hit on the head in his first appearance, but neither flinched nor retreated a step. Nothing thenceforth could harm him, temporal or otherwise. Numbers speak for while he remain quiet and number do not take sides…..

sunil varma

Data source : Cricinfo.com,

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