He may not be the “Player of the Decade” but Sachin Tendulkar does take some beating.  On day one of the 1st Test against Bangladesh at Chittagong, Tendulkar became the first man to score 13,000 Test runs.  On day two, he went on to hold the innings together and to post his 44th test century.  Now there are two heaps that the Little Master sits atop, and you need good eyesight to see 2nd place.

Tendulkar’s stock of Test runs is 13,075.  The next best is Lara on 11,953.  The next best active player is in fact the Player of the Decade.  His name is Ponting and he has 11,859.  In the century stakes, it is Ponting again chasing Tendulkar with 39 centuries.

When you add One Day cricket runs, you really see what a run machine Tendulkar is.  He has made 17,394 of those – almost 4,000 better than the next best (Jayasuriya).  But then again, he has played a huge amount of that form of the game (although it should be noted that Jayasuriya has in fact played four more matches than Tendulkar).

Tendulkar has only 45 hundreds in One Day cricket, just 17 ahead of Ponting.  It is hard to imagine anyone ever catching up to the Little Master.

Well, all these numbers have made my head a little dizzy but I thought some celebration of 13,000 big ones was in order.