You & cricket? :) Did they return your passport?

:D

Awesome stuff by kohli.

Sachin 2.0

Except when Kohli scores a ton, India wins :p

when you have over a 100 centuries then you are bound to lose a few games as well, even after scoring a ton....people seem to forget that out of his 100 centuries, there have only been 24 occasions when india has lost....

a 24% loss record is pretty acceptable....i'm pretty sure other stars like, ponting, kallis, lara, etc would have a similar record....but because sachin has scored many more centuries than them, people seem to think its a curse that india loses when he scores a century....

Guilty as charged. The thing is Sachin sometimes takes us so close to victory and then we lose which hurts. 136 vs Pak, 175 against Aus.

Another common criticism of Sachin is that he doesn't step up when really needed. Or if he does, he can't take us all the way to safety. This conclusion tends to be drawn from the fact that most of his centuries in winning causes have come when India was batting first and didn't have the pressure of chasing.

PS: Now that I think about it, it could just be that back in the 1990s, we didn't have a strong tail to finish the job that Sachin started. So it's not necessarily that he couldn't take us all the way home but that the tail couldn't capitalize on the start he provided.

Anyone tried this "priceline" sort of feature on makemytrip? Basically they give you time slots and a price and once you pay for the ticket they let you know what airline it is.

Not a bad deal. Was looking at IXC-DEL and cheapest fare was 4,500 on Kingfisher. I went with the pay now and find out later feature and got the ticket for 2,500. Great deal, even though I did get it on Kingfisher only. Saved 2k though. ^ Jet was pricing out at 8,000 so that was a no go.

i don't think kingfisher is a good bet right now....even at inr 2,500....

I know. Either it was that or a 6hr journey by car. Not that I had a choice in the airline :(

Thought I might do a quick statsguru on this. It turns out that others do not have a similar record actually. I also thought it made sense to separate the 2 forms of the game. Have focused on ODIs since that's where Sachin's critics are most vocal.

Amongst players who have scored 20+ ODI centuries, Sachin actually has the worst win record of 67%. If I was to lower the threshold to 10 centuries, there are only 4 players with a worse 'Win %' - Chanderpaul (64%), Sangakkara (62%), Gayle!!! (53%) and Treskothick (50%). Best in the world are Gilchrist and Viv Richards (100%!). Amongst the other ODI greats - Ponting (83%), Kallis (76%), Lara (84%), Jayasuriya (86%) and Ganguly (82%) are all significantly better than Sachin.
Amongst Indians, Kohli and Sehwag have only 11 and 15 centuries; However, all but one of them have come in winning causes.

One could argue that there is more to this than Sachin's ability. For instance, Sachin sets the platform but tail or middle order can't finish it off like hyderago said:

I felt the same way about him but numbers speak differently. Sachin has a better Win % in 1990s, 83% to be precise - 20 out of his 24 centuries till 2000 came in winning causes. In contrast, only 13 of his 25 centuries in 2000s have seen India winning (close to 50% of Treskothick). I personally think that the game now requires not just big scores but big scores at good Strike Rates and while Sachin can stay and score big, it does not do the team any favors because of the low strike rate (basically, the opportunity cost is too high these days). Latest examples of slow centuries from Sachin, Warner, Dilshan seem to reinforce this.

while that may be true, you also have to admit that the more number of centuries, the more the likelihood of that percentage being lower than the others....

he has 49 odi centuries which have resulted is 14 losses, 1 tie & 1 no result....that means 33 centuries have resulted in wins....the next person on the list (ponting) doesn't even have 33 centuries....

Not bad at all. Do you know if there are any routes which are more certain than the others these days with IT? I have 23k miles plus 2 Business Class tickets (Amex card) that I'm hoping to redeem quickly.

Why? While more number of centuries would mean that he has more centuries in which India lost in absolute terms compared to others. But the percentage should stay roughly the same...