Sachin Vs Kohli – Why We Should Not Compare The 2?

Sachin Vs Kohli? Gavaskar vs Sachin? Wasim vs Bumrah ? Honestly we all are fed up of these comparisons and the blanket statement people make that “so and so is better than this and that” without any reason and considerations.

Context

Sachin vs Kohli ? Time and again, comparisons keep cropping up between the current and previous legends of the game. No matter how many times lot of us say that players across generations should not be compared, but lot of broadcasters and analysts will continue to compare. Frankly there is no clear objective way these comparisons can be done because the context cannot be quantified. But, even if that comparison is done, we should at least attempt to factor in as much context as possible so that it is still simple enough to understand but not trivial as well.

It is similar to comparing our parents earning Rs 5000 per month in their time and still being able to manage everything and us earning in lakhs while still being barely able to maintain similar lifestyle. Inflation works its way in everything. Unsurprisingly, it works similarly as far as runs are concerned in cricket. There was a time when 250 was a mighty potential winning score while these days even 350s are not safe.

One thing is sure that any of the greats in an any era would still be great if they were born in any different era.

Sure comparisons have existed since eternity but we feel it has become toxic in the modern times. When Sachin was a kid, we did celebrate and feel proud of his exploits when he surpassed the previous greats, but never did that generation vilify or put down the others before him. That generation still said that Sachin was the greatest but, still revered the likes of Viv and Gavaskar wondering how they would have done in Sachin’s time. What they did in theirs, was not up for comparison.

The recent world cup again sparked comparisons of all with the greats of previous years and specifically in India, the media is obsessed with showing records being made and broken and creating new heroes everyday.

Decoding Sachin vs Kohli Through “Run Inflation”

Kohli’s exploits in the recent 2023 World Cup sparked the same where he scored 765 runs, highest ever in a single edition, with 3 100s. Absolutely great performance which saw India reach the finals unbeaten. But then the comparisons with Sachin Tendulkar started. Now, not to take anything away from Kohli, but curiously, we wanted to look into this with a little bit more of contextual info and see how it stacked up against Sachin’s exploits in 2003 World Cup. If at all with the inflation factored in, Kohli’s numbers still stacked up better than Sachin’s, then we did actually have an all time best performance.

To take a stab at this run inflation, lets look at couple of ODI World Cups across time periods. We will first look at 2003 and 2023 World Cups since Kohli surpassed Tendulkar’s tally of 673 runs from 2003 WC.

2003 World Cup

• A total of 100 completed innings were played. This does not include the matches where there was no result.
• 20101 runs were scored
• 721 wickets were taken
• 18 scores of 250-300 (18%)
• 8 scores of 300-350 (8%)
• 1 score of 350-400 (1%)
• No scores above 400
• Overall 27% of scores were 250+ and 73% of scores were below 250
• India scored a total of 2593 runs
• Sachin Tendulkar scored 673 of those, a substantial 26%
• There were a total of 21 centuries in the tournament.
• Average runs per innings 201.01
• Average wickets per innings 7.21
• 3 teams could not manage even 1 score over 250
• 4 teams managed to score 250 or above only once.

Top 3 run scorers

• Sachin’s SR and avg was more than any of the other top 3 runs getters.
• Sachin scored a whopping 44% more runs than the next best Ganguly.

Looking at the above one can see that scoring big runs was not that easy. It really took more than extraordinary effort for team to post a big total and those also happened majorly when strong teams played the so called quite weaker teams.

It was also not easy and free flowing to accumulate runs for players themselves as evident from the gap between Sachin and Ganguly. Sachin here was heads and shoulders above his peers.

2023 World Cup

• A total of 96 completed innings were played. This does not include the matches where there was no result.
• 24639 runs were scored
• 730 wickets were taken
• 24 scores of 250-300 (25%)
• 12 scores of 300-350 (13%)
• 10 scores of 350-400 (10%)
• 3 scores above 400 (3%)
• Overall a whopping 51% of scores were 250+
• India scored a total of 3160 runs
• Virat Kohli scored 765 of those, a substantial 24%
• There were a total of 40 centuries in the tournament.
• Average runs per innings 256.66
• Average wickets per innings 7.60
• All teams had at least 3+ 250 scores
• In fact only two teams did not reach a total of 300 or more even once.

Top 3 run getters

• Kohli’s average for sure was astronomical and given the modern legend he is, it comes as no surprise.
• His SR though was the least among the top 3.
• Kohli scored 28% more runs than the next best Sharma.

Inflation Factors – Sachin vs Kohli

Considering this 20 year period and assuming that Sachin and Kohli are comparable skill wise we clearly see and general inflation in run scoring over the years. And no cricket follower can deny that fact.

Since we working here with a small data set we can only benchmark based on this. When we do have more resources, we will surely attempt this over a much larger data set comprising of all matches/series/tournaments across time periods.

Taking 2003 as the base, the inflation in simplistic calculations is 28%. Wickets per innings have stayed more or less the same.

Taking inflation factor into account, if we had to extrapolate 2023 numbers to 2003 times, correcting for inflation, India would have scored 2469 runs (less than what they actually did in 2003) and Kohli would have scored 598 runs

Conclusion

As far as Sachin’s exploits are concerned, there was no one close to him on any parameter. And this is considering when he was not just the opener but was tasked with consolidation and expected to finish big as well unlike Kohli who does not need to worry about giving aggressive risky starts and no one complains if he just plays the situation at the death while the designated finishers go big. Hence more not outs as well, combined with factors like bowling conditions etc etc.

Even taking a simplistic inflation metric into account, the enormity of Sachin’s exploits can be understood vaguely even if we cannot super accurately quantify it.

This is not to defend the previous greats, but straight comparisons on absolute numbers is unfair for the current ones as well.

So until we have a better mechanism to accurately quantify context, we should let the comparisons like Sachin Vs Kohli, rest.