I have been a huge fan of Sachin Tendulkar since childhood and think he is one of the most exciting batsman of all time and also one of the all-time greats. But I do not consider him THE GREATEST as many Indians believe him to be .Here are my reasons:–

1. Sachin never scored a 300 in his first-class career let alone his Test career. Other great batsman like Don Bradman,Brian Lara,Garry Sobers displayed great appetite for runs and scored atleast one triple hundred.(Bradman scored 8 in his first-class career)

2. Sachin never scored twin hundreds in a Test(century in each innings of a Test match). Though he came close on several occasions,he did have a lot of opportunities during his 200-Test career to do this. Bradman ,Lara,Sobers,Dravid and Gavaskar were able to achieve this feat atleast once.

3. Sachin hit only 6 double-hundreds inspite of playing more Tests than anyone (Bradman still holds the record to this day -12 – though he played only 52 Tests!!)

4. Sachin hit just one hundred during a successful run chase (103*vs England,Dec 2008 ) in Tests and has a very poor batting 4th inning batting average. (Luck did not favor Sachin on several occasions but we are purely looking at the statistics).

5. Sachin has never aggregated over 500 runs in any 4-Test or 5- Test series. Don Bradman, Sunil Gavaskar , Rahul Dravid,Ricky Ponting and Brian Lara have achieved this feat atleast twice.

So there it is…5 reasons on why Sachin cannot be the Greatest purely on the basis of statistics.However,I would say that without question Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar is the most influential and determined cricketer of all time having inspired millions of people to dream big and be resilient through his passion,longevity and determination to keep making comebacks from several injuries.His humility in spite of his enormous success also helped cricketers like Dhoni to cope with adulation.

So,a million thanks to Sachin for the thousands of happy smiles but he is not the greatest batsman from a purely statistical standpoint.

Cricket statistics Source : http://www.howstat.com