Byron Vale says Sachin Tendulkar is top of the cricket tree.
In the real world you wouldn't have to pick between Sachin Tendulkar and Brian Lara. There are six batting positions in any cricket team and you would expect Lara and Tendulkar to fill two of them. In fact, they would probably be the first two names on your sheet.
But where's the fun in that? Sports history is about making the marginal call. About divining the slightest edge that one great player had over the other. It's about convincing yourself and others that you're right.
If we don't take into account the England v India series, there is little to separate the careers of the two most dominant batsmen of their generation.
Lara played 131 Tests, Tendulkar played six more; Tendulkar scored 10,922 Test runs, Lara scored 1031 runs more, Tendulkar averages 55.44, Lara 52.88, Tendulkar scored 37 hundreds, Lara 34, Tedulkar 43 fifties, Lara 48.
In one day cricket, Tendulkar scored 15051 runs to Lara's 10405 but he did play 89 more matches. Their averages are similar: Tendulkar's is 44.13 compared to Lara's 40.48, but astonishingly the Indian has scored 41 one day centuries compared to Lara's 19.
To my mind there are four reasons to pick Tendulkar ahead of Lara.
1. Lara had the advantage of being born left-handed. As the great Sir Garfield Sobers told sportasylum, "bowlers have always had a lot more difficulty bowling to left-handers than right-handers because they bowl so much to right-handers over their career they have got the right line and length so they are thrown when the man is on the other side".
2. Tendulkar played the important innings when it mattered. Yes Lara's 400 is the highest score by a Test batsman, but it came after the West Indies were already 3-0 down in the series and that match ended in a draw. Tendulkar's hundreds have often saved India from a perilous position or taken them into an advantageous one.
3. Tendulkar is a class act. When Lara retired he was rightly lauded but there was also a loud murmur that he could have done more and that his playboy lifestyle had negatively impacted on the team. When Tendulkar retires there will be no such talk.
4. Sir Don Bradman said Tendulkar was the player most like himself, which is good enough for me.
Derek Dyson says Brian Charles Lara was the greatest batsman of his generation.
His unique technique was a cause of wonderment throughout the cricketing world - raised bat, weight forward and eyes low. Like a predator ready to pounce on his prey.
Lara gorged on the Australian bowling attack for his maiden Test century in 1993, reaching a mammoth total of 277.
More was to come in 1994 when in the space of two months Lara set the records for both the highest score in Test and first-class cricket.
He posted 375 against England in St. John's to eclipse the score of his countryman, Sir Garfield Sobers', by 10 runs.
Playing for Warwickshire against Durham later in the year, Lara amassed 501 not out from just 427 balls, a total which included 62 fours and 10 sixes.
However Lara's career was anything but smooth - career highs and lows would come in almost equal measures.
He captained the team on three separate occasions, but never saw eye-to-eye with the West Indies Cricket Board or the selectors.
One high point came in 2004 when Lara led the ODI team to an unlikely win in the final of the ICC Champions Trophy against, you guessed it, England.
At times his own form would desert him, mainly attributable to weight and injury problems, but it is testimony to the indefatigable character of Lara that he always fought back.
At the same time he reclaimed the record score in Test matches with 400 against England in 2004, he became the second player to score two Test triple centuries and the second player to score two career quadruple centuries.
With the standard of West Indies cricket fading over the latter stages of his career, his repeated heroics were often made to merely save-face for his country.
Indeed Lara scored 20% of his teams runs during his career, a feat only surpassed by Don Bradman (23%) and George Headley (21%).
When he retired after a disappointing 2007 World Cup, both personally and for the team, Lara had left a legacy beyond these impressive figures: 11,953 runs in 131 Test matches at 52.88, 10,405 runs in ODI matches.
He was the greatest of his time.
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