Rahul Dravid decided to call it a day and thus comes the end of an illustrious career. A lot has been written and more will be written in days to come, but those who have witnessed Rahul's batting know that no amount of runs can do justice to the man and his career. I often take the refuge of 'numbers' when it comes to define a career because memory gets clouded and lot of prejudices enter in our evaluation.
This is specially true in the case of Rahul who all through his career remained in the shadow of Sachin Tendulkar. They say that he did not mind that, but what choice did he have when the whole country decided to remain mesmerized with Sachin (for few reasons of course).
Dravid's first test match somehow defined his career. A glorious knock of 95 at the Lords on his debut, but Ganguly another debutant scored a century and took all the limelight. This has been the fate of Rahul all through career. Judgement of Indian cricket masses is strongly clouded by their emotions and not one really pays attention to numbers. For some reason we treat Zaheer Khan a great bowler (in Indian context of course) but we forget to compare his record with Javagal Srinath, who is not considered a great bowler.
So I tried to look through the number again compared Rahul Dravid with our benchmark of greatness Sachin Tendulkar when they played together. I hate to bring this comparison by just numbers so I made some graphics. I asked a simple question: when Sachin and Rahul batted together in an innings in a test match who scored more runs. I do not want to calculate averages, that tells nothing, I will only give you the raw data in a pictorial manner so you can judge with less emotions and more objectivity. Here is how to read the figure
Panel A: Innings by innings runs scored by Sachin Tendulkar. The dark line is smoothed version of the same data.
This is specially true in the case of Rahul who all through his career remained in the shadow of Sachin Tendulkar. They say that he did not mind that, but what choice did he have when the whole country decided to remain mesmerized with Sachin (for few reasons of course).
Dravid's first test match somehow defined his career. A glorious knock of 95 at the Lords on his debut, but Ganguly another debutant scored a century and took all the limelight. This has been the fate of Rahul all through career. Judgement of Indian cricket masses is strongly clouded by their emotions and not one really pays attention to numbers. For some reason we treat Zaheer Khan a great bowler (in Indian context of course) but we forget to compare his record with Javagal Srinath, who is not considered a great bowler.
So I tried to look through the number again compared Rahul Dravid with our benchmark of greatness Sachin Tendulkar when they played together. I hate to bring this comparison by just numbers so I made some graphics. I asked a simple question: when Sachin and Rahul batted together in an innings in a test match who scored more runs. I do not want to calculate averages, that tells nothing, I will only give you the raw data in a pictorial manner so you can judge with less emotions and more objectivity. Here is how to read the figure
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| Sachin Tendulkar vs Rahul Dravid. Rahul is marginally better if at all when they play together. |
Panel A: Innings by innings runs scored by Sachin Tendulkar. The dark line is smoothed version of the same data.
Panel B: Innings by innings runs scored by Rahul Dravid. The dark line is smoothed version of the same data.
Panel C: Probability distribution of runs scored by Sachin (brown line) and Rahul (blue line). This graph shows the probability of scoring some number of runs in an innings. It turns out that there is no difference between the two when they batted in the same innings. Moreover, it is all noise, as the distribution is an exponential (thick gray line), characteristic of a class of stochastic processes (Poisson Process).
Panel D: Scatter plot of runs scored by Sachin (Y-axis) and Rahul (X-axis) when they played together. If the point is above the gray line then Sachin scored more runs, if it is below the gray line Rahul scored more runs. It turns out that Rahul outscored Sachin 130 times while Sachin outscored Rahul 118 times. But there is not much difference in the runs they scored: Rahul (12981) scored 395 runs more than Sachin (12586). Ideally we would want that both score together but that was so rare.
Panel E: The scatter data in panel D is presented as probability in pseudocolors.
Panel F: Innings by inning difference in the score of Rahul and Sachin. Positive number means Rahul scored more and negative number means Sachin scored more.
Panel G: The distribution of run difference shown in panel E is a gaussian noise.
Panel H: Autocorrelation of run scoring by Sachin (brown line) and Rahul (blue line). Once again, as revealed by panel C, the run scoring by the two players is a stochastic process. Although for Rahul there is some increased chance of repeating his performance (failure or success) every 5 matches (I am not sure if it is significant).
Panel C: Probability distribution of runs scored by Sachin (brown line) and Rahul (blue line). This graph shows the probability of scoring some number of runs in an innings. It turns out that there is no difference between the two when they batted in the same innings. Moreover, it is all noise, as the distribution is an exponential (thick gray line), characteristic of a class of stochastic processes (Poisson Process).
Panel D: Scatter plot of runs scored by Sachin (Y-axis) and Rahul (X-axis) when they played together. If the point is above the gray line then Sachin scored more runs, if it is below the gray line Rahul scored more runs. It turns out that Rahul outscored Sachin 130 times while Sachin outscored Rahul 118 times. But there is not much difference in the runs they scored: Rahul (12981) scored 395 runs more than Sachin (12586). Ideally we would want that both score together but that was so rare.
Panel E: The scatter data in panel D is presented as probability in pseudocolors.
Panel F: Innings by inning difference in the score of Rahul and Sachin. Positive number means Rahul scored more and negative number means Sachin scored more.
Panel G: The distribution of run difference shown in panel E is a gaussian noise.
Panel H: Autocorrelation of run scoring by Sachin (brown line) and Rahul (blue line). Once again, as revealed by panel C, the run scoring by the two players is a stochastic process. Although for Rahul there is some increased chance of repeating his performance (failure or success) every 5 matches (I am not sure if it is significant).
What does this analysis tell us? Because I considered the matches when they played together, I automatically corrected by all the conditions, bowlers (they bat at no. 3 and 4) and other effects. SO when we look this analysis I do not see any difference between Sachin and Rahul. If I have to chose perhaps I will go for Rahul given that he scored 395 more runs. But I may not play them together because chances that they both will score good amount of runs is rather rare.
This great similarity between the two giants of Indian cricket and or World Cricket in 2000s makes me ask why Rahul remained in Sachin's shadow? What if Rahuls had debuted slightly before Sachin Tendulkar, would be worshipping Rahul and not Sachin?
Perhaps Sachin is so popular for his early start and his explosive batting in limited over cricket, something Rahul was never allowed play like Sachin. I will do that analysis some other day. But here is a humble request, please, respect Rahul for what he has achieved, his numbers tell a very good story and they very conclusively say if at all Rahul Dravid is better than Sachin Tendulkar. Rahul is a humble man when he says that the next generation is well equipped, we all know the vacuum he is leaving at the number 3.
right arm over
Arvind
