Sachin Tendulkar - a Measure of Greatness

After 24 years of playing Test Match Cricket Sachin Tendulkar has finally retired. He leaves with many of the game’s career records. There is no doubt that he is one of the greatest batsmen to ever play the game of Test Cricket but how does his longevity stack up against another sports icon’s records?

The best comparison I can find in any other sport I follow is the NFL's Jerry Rice who retired in 2005 after 20 seasons playing in the NFL at the top level. NFL fans will point to the fact that there’s no reason to compare football and cricket because cricket is not as tough and physical as football. But every sport has its own set of challenges. And to compete in any sport you have to go against the best in that specific sport.
The only way to measure greatness is to contrast it with greatness from a different field. If you are an icon you have to be measured against other icons.

Jerry Rice dazzled the imagination of the public with his amazing catching ability for the famed 49’ers. And just when his career seemed destined to end after he tore his anterior cruciate and medial collateral ligaments in a game in 1997 he came back better than ever before.

The second part of Jerry Rice’s career might be the most impressive. After his retirement he holds many receiving records but for the sake of this comparison let’s focus on the career records.

Career Statistic	Jerry Rice	No. 2	Difference in %
Receptions	1,549	1,289 (Tony Gonzalez)*	20%
Touchdowns	198	156 (Randy Moss)	27%
Yards gained	22,895	15,934 (Terrell Owens)**	44%

* As of 11/16/2013 Tony Gonzalez of the Kansas City Chiefs is still active ** Terrell Owens hasn’t played in the NFL for three years but still hasn’t officially retired 

Similar numbers for Sachin Tendulkar look like this.

Career Statistic	Sachin Tendulkar	No. 2	Difference in %
Test Matches	200	162 (Jacques Kallis)**	23%
Runs	15,921	13,378 (Ricky Ponting)	19%

At first glance it doesn’t look like Sachin Tendulkar stacks up that well to Jerry Rice. Where Jerry Rice is anywhere between 20 to 44 percent ahead of the next-best in his performance categories Tendulkar “only” bests his opposition with 19 to 23 percent. And since Jacques Kallis doesn’t look like he intends to retire anytime soon there is a possibility that Tendulkar’s margin might have shrunk considerably by the time Jacques Kallis retires. 

If we try and compare Tendulkar and Rice head-to-head we get more nuances in the picture.

	Sachin Tendulkar	Jerry Rice
World Championships	1	3
Salary in last year	$4 Mill	$ 873,529
Length of Career	24 Years	20 Years

I know, this is like comparing apples and oranges. Nothing can take away anything from what these two amazing athletes achieved in their careers. But like any other bar discussion its always nice to sort out the story behind the numbers.

What position should you play in the NFL?

Tell me your height and weight, and then I’ll tell you what position you’d be playing in the NFL. That seems to be the lesson we can learn from the visualization shown below. Of course it doesn’t tell us if you’re going to play offense or defense, so you’ll have to decide that by yourself. Or let your coaches do that for you.

The visualization shows the correlation by position between height and weight of current active NFL players. It was compiled by Dr. Craig M. Booth who until recently worked as a computational astrophysicist at the University of Chicago.

What is so great about this visualization is that it’s intuitive, understandable and it confirms many of the stereotypes many of us have about the different position player types. Wide receivers and cornerbacks are the lightest players on the field and linemen occupy the other end of the spectrum (tall and heavy).

The visualization made its rounds on internet message boards and forums a couple of weeks ago. Most of the comments apart from the obvious (fascination) centered around the fact that it was strange to see how clustered the weight/height relation was for each position. But if you follow the NFL long enough you’ll know that this should be expected. Every offseason there’s a story about a different player who’s considering switching position and in order to do that he needs to gain/lose weight.

This happens because NFL as a league is in many ways very conservative. In other words the many position coaches that crowd rosters of NFL and college teams have a mental map in their mind resembling the visualization Dr. Booth presents. So when a Linebacker is contemplating moving to Defensive End his position coaches will usually tell him to spend the offseason putting on 30 extra pounds (of muscle).

It could be interesting to see how the map of different position players’ height and weight has changed over time. That way you could see the effect of different events over time like how legendary Linebacker, Lawrence Taylor, changed the Left Tackle position (see Michael Lewis’ book “The Blind Side” for specifics).

While the visualization in itself didn’t surprise me as much as it fascinated me, there were a few surprising takeaways. Here is my list of the 3 biggest surprises from the visualization.
1. Defensive linemen have bigger variety of weight than offensive linemen
2. Cornerbacks are on average shorter than the wide receivers they cover
3. There is a Wide Receiver who’s only 5' 5" (1.65 m)

Note: The visualization used in this blog is taken from this Business Insider article