Against the Spin

Sachin Tendulkar just scored his 42nd Test century in Hamilton.  And what a beauty it was to watch, complete with exquistely timed back-foot cover drives and so-called “ramp” shots.  Immediately afterwards, the focus shifted to records as the commentators wondered who would overtake Tendulkar’s record of most Test hundreds.  Ricky Ponting is the obvious candidate, and he has every chance of passing Tendulkar before he hangs his bat.  But who next?  Who will hold that record in 15 years time?

I thought it’d be fun to speculate with a simple back-of the-envelope calculation.  I want to stress that I’m not actually trying to predict if someone can overtake Tendulkar (or Ponting, as the case may be), but merely getting a ballpark estimate of who might be in the running.  The table below shows where current batsmen will end up if they continue to score centuries at their current rate, and retire at age 38.  I realize it’s quite a stretch to suggest players will score at their current rate until they’re 38, but I wanted to give the young guys every chance to catch up — they’ll need it!  I restricted the list to active players who’ve scored at least 5 centuries already, because speculating on uncapped 20-year-old wonders, is the province of cricket coaches & gamblers, not amateur cricket fans armed with Excel.

I’m not surprised to see Pietersen & Graeme Smith in that league.  They’re both young, and over time, we may well consider them in the same league as Ponting, Kallis, et al.  England fans have plenty to be happy about, with Andrew Strauss & Alastair Cook accumulating centuries in a hurry as well.  If you look at 100s scored per year, Pietersen & Strauss have been unusually profilic.  However, they both got late starts in Test cricket compared to some of the other batsmen on that list.  I wouldn’t read too much into the actual numbers above, but I can say one thing:  I’ll be keeping an eye out for that English trio.