With Sachin Tendulkar on an overdrive in the last couple of years reeling centuries in Test Cricket no wonder media, millions of his fans, former greats of the game have been eagerly waiting for Sachin to complete a century of centuries in international cricket. Another point of interest for millions of fans, especially those in India is how many more centuries will Sachin reel in Test Cricket before calling it quits so as to make Ponting's task that more tougher.
While one may not know how many more centuries will Sachin score and whether or not Ponting will overtake Sachin on centuries count in Test Matches, one thing which many have not noticed is the fact that Sachin with 48 Test hundreds to his name has already opened a big gap between himself and some legends who have quit the game.
West Indian legends Sobers and Lloyd have aggregated as many as 45 centuries but those figures pale in comparison to Sachins singular tally of 48. The deadly duo of Vivian Richards and Gordon Greenidge have manged to aggregate only 43 hundreds, while the famed opening duo of Gooch and Boycoot have 42 between them. Another great Javed Miandad and his successor Inzamam have aggregated 48 hundreds between them. A list of greats of the game and the number of test centuries accumulated by them are given below just to show the gap between what they achieved and what Sachin has already achieved so far .
27 Allan Border
26 Gary Sobers
25 Inzamam Ul Haq
24 Greg Chapel
24 Vivian Richards
23 Javed Miandad
22 Geoff Boycott
20 Graham Gooch
19 Clive Lloyd
19 Gorden Greenidge
18 David Gower
If you see the list above, Sachin has scored at least 20 centuries more than greats like Gary Sobers and Allan Border and double the tally of what Greg Chapel and Vivian Richards achieved in their career. Sachin achieved more than tiwce the number of centuries of what Javed Miandad, Geoff Boycott, Clive Llloyd, Gordon Greenide and David Gower have aggregated in their entire career.
Not only in cricket but in almost every sport the magnitude of a players achievement is not noticed by the public during their public days because of high standards set by the players themselves and expectations of future milestones from the fans, and only after their retirement one wonders at their achievement after seeing the stats in records books.