Numbers Game: Are Kohli, Cook a threat to Tendulkar’s records?

I remember one of my colleagues asking me the score on the morning of the last India-England Test here in Mumbai. He had tickets for the day’s play but had an early meeting and couldn’t make the first session. “Is Sachin out yet?” he asked. I answered: “Yes.” He sighed and went off to work. And no, he didn’t go to watch the game that day. Like many others, he really only wanted to watch the Little Master play.

As Sachin Tendulkar’s career winds down, people like my colleague will have to rely on video footage for this joy. They will also have the comfort of seeing his name against all the batting records in the game.

Or so they think.

There is a clear and present danger to Sachin’s records if players like Alastair Cook and Virat Kohli keep going at the rate they are, in Tests and ODIs respectively. If we project their current records over the next decade-and-a-half, they come well within touching distance of Tendulkar.

What I’ve come to appreciate during this exercise is the sheer longevity of Tendulkar’s career. Alastair Cook made his Test debut at 21 and Virat Kohli’s ODI debut came at 19 but Tendulkar has been playing both formats since he was 16. But the question is, how long would Cook and Kohli have to play to get within striking range, given that they continue at this pace?

Cook hits a Test hundred roughly every seven innings, a shade slower than Tendulkar. However, he’s played 167 Test innings in just seven years, or roughly 24 innings each year. This can be attributed to English cricket’s love of the traditional format. Apart form his obvious skill, this has given him the opportunity to rack up the runs. Tendulkar, on the other hand, has played about 14 Test innings each year, 10 innings fewer than Cook. The math indicates that at this rate, Cook will need to play 174 more Test innings to get 51 hundreds. At the current rate of 24 Tests per year, he’d need a little over seven years to cross that landmark. He’d be 35 at that time and, given that he doesn’t bowl or exert himself too much in the field, it seems likely he’ll be able to bat just fine.

We’re effectively saying that, at 28, Cook is at the halfway mark of his career. If we double his runs, he’ll be at the 15,000 mark – again very near Tendulkar. Barring any serious injury, Cook could play well into his late 30s and break all kinds of Test records. His technique has allowed him to score runs all over the world and his three hundreds in India last year were thrilling for England fans because here was a batsman who could handle spin with ease. Unlike Kevin Pietersen, Cook didn’t have to blast the ball to impose himself on R Ashwin and Pragyan Ojha; he just waited for the ball to come to him and wore the bowlers down. Add to that his access to the longest format of the game, and Tendulkar fans have reason to worry. At the other end of the spectrum, Tendulkar’s ODI records may come under threat from Kohli. India tends to play lots of ODIs – especially in the subcontinent where he is strong. His ODI career is only 106 innings old but he’s already hit 15 hundreds in five years. If we extrapolate, at his current rate of 21 innings per year, it will take him a little over 11 more years to reach Tendulkar’s 49 centuries. He’d be 35 – again, well within the lifespan of the modern batsman. Kohli also has the highest 50-100 conversion rate of all time: He has just 23 fifties for his 15 hundreds or 1.5x as many half-centuries as centuries. There is no other batsman with more than 2,000 runs who boasts a ratio so tight.

If he too plays into his late 30s, he should also be able to challenge his hero’s achievements. There are some concerns though. Kohli will have to manage injuries as he does throw himself around in the field. He will probably be India’s full-time captain once Dhoni retires. It remains to be seen how he handles the pressure of being India’s star batsman along with leadership duties and whether he is able to bounce back from lean spells. This is something that Tendulkar managed better than most; Kohli’s mercurial career hasn’t yet hit a big loss of form.

However, one thing which might be out of his hands – and probably the most important– is the growing demand for T20 cricket which will surely eat into the number of ODIs played. In fact, the ODI format itself may not be around in 15 years unless it creates a unique niche for itself. And even then, will the BCCI give Kohli 21 ODIs a year for the rest of his career?

This is all guess work and extrapolation with plenty of caveats. What we can say is that both Cook and Kohli have the class (and their national boards’ penchant for particular formats) to amass hundreds at a frightening rate.

So perhaps Cook will keep playing 12 tests a year and Kohli 21 ODIs but I think it is safe to say no other batsman will ever be able to match the Test match and ODI consistency of Tendulkar.