Well I am not saying it rahter it is former australian captain Ian chappel. Here is what he have to say,

Lemoney Chari - That was one helluva humor! You rock girl!

Loote Sir - Not to forget, we are doing exactly what Bidhan pal wanted - retiring the Little Master right here in the thread! :-P

Hey loots,
Me doing fine now that the god damn midterm week is over and done with. Now you guys will see a lot of me weather you like it or not :D Sajha.com here I come to use of all thats possible of the available number of posts. ;)

Flips,
Chari re? hehe thats soo cute :D Done with your mid-terms yet? Goodluck.

:O :O
whether. duh.

Flip flop once said to make a comparision of lara with bradman. There is no one closer to bradman. But if anybody's record resembles to any extent to bradman it should be lara.

AND OF COURSE TENDULKAR MAY SCORE MOST RUNS OR MAKE MOST CENTURIES. ANY GOOD BATSMAN WHO PLAYS FOR MORE THAN A DECADE CAN MAKE SUCH RECORDS OR COME CLOSE TO IT.

BUT SOME OF THE RECORDS THAT LARA HAS MADE SACHIN CANNOT EVEN DREAM OF AND CANNOT GURANTEE HE CAN MAKE SUCH RECORDS EVEN IF HE PLAYS FOR NEXT 1000 YEARS.


->LARA became the first man to score seven centuries in eight first-class innings, the first being the record 375 against England and the last being the record 501 not out against Durham ( Moving ahead of don bradman)

-> Only player to regain his world record highest score back breaking the record of hayden by scoring 400. He previously held by scoring 375

->In the same innings, he became the second batsman to score 1000 Test runs in five different years, four days after Matthew Hayden first set the record. (somebody was talking about lara's consitency. Even bradman has been unable to do so)


->Nine of his centuries are double centuries (surpassed only by Donald Bradman)

->Two of them are triple-centuries (matched only by Bradman)

--> Only player to score over 350 runs three times in a test match.(375, 400 and 223+123 ). Even bradman is unable to do so

->He became only the sixth batsman to speed from 0 to a 100 in one session

->Lara has scored an astonishing 20% of his team runs [, a feat surpassed only by Bradman (23%)

->Lara scored 688 runs (42% of team output, a record for a series of three or more Tests, and the second highest aggregate runs in history for a three-Test series) in the 2001-02 tour of Sri Lanka

->He also scored a century and a double century in the third Test in that same Sri Lanka tour, a feat repeated only five other times in Test cricket history

-->Lara holds the world record of scoring most runs in a single over (28 runs against left-arm spinner RJ Peterson of South Africa) in Test cricket . He also scored 26 runs in a single over off the bowling of Danish Kaneria at Multan Cricket Stadium on 21 November 2006.


-->With 162 catches, He is second all-time in the category of most catches in a career by a non-Wicketkeeper, behind Mark Waugh.

--> Wisden published a top 100 list in July 2001, a distillation of the best performances from 1,552 Tests, 54,494 innings and 29,730 bowling performances. Three innings by Lara were placed in the top 15 (the most for any batsman in that range)

I agree with Loote. Both Sachin and Lara are great batsmen. People always love to compare them. And nothing wrong with that. But the reason given by Chappel for Sachin's retirement is not fair enough. If Sachin is not playing as good as Lara (according to Chappel), that does not mean Lara should retire. Chris Gayle, Sangakara are not as good as Lara. That does not mean they should retire.

But having said that Sachin should retire now because of other reasons. It will be good for him coz great players retire when they are still playing good. Its not good to retire becuase of poor performance.

When it comes to comapring Lara and Sachin, I always felt that both are great. But there is one attitude of Lara that stands ahead of Sachin. Lara is a slefless player but Sachin.. I dont know.. I sometimes doubt that. We have seen on numerous occasions that Sachin plays at a snail's pace once he reaches 90s. Sometimes you get the feeling that he puts himslef ahead of team, he sometimes plays for the record. Look at the way Dravid had to once declare the inning when Sachin was on 194 (not out) . He wanted to give Sachin a chance to get the double hundred but Sachin was playing so slowly that the team was putting its chance to win in danger. Then dravid had to declare. These are the kinds of situations when you feel if Sachin is a commited team player. Otherwise I think both are great batsmen. But I find more elegance in Lara's batting.