The Iconoclast: Is Sachin really great?

Disclaimer: I am ardent fan of the Master Blaster and he is as much a God to me as is Big B or SRK. However, when the whole nation is celebrating Sachin's 35th century my friend Sharad persuaded me to become the Devil's Advocate especially by using all kinds of statistical tools from Microsoft Excel to MiNITAB picking up data from Wisden Cricinfo. But these are not my 'views' about the legend. Also note that the data below does not anywhere cover Sachin's bowling career at all.
PS: You may want to visit <http://www.isixsigma.com/dictionary/glossary.asp> to get understanding of the Stats in this post.

Credits: All statistical prowess, graphs, diagrams and analysis is due to Mr. Sharad Sharma - our Statistics and Quality 'bond' !! Yours Truly is merely a documentor here.

Hypothesis: Sachin is not a match winner while chasing a score?

Method: Annova ~ Box plots


Indicates that Runs scored by Sachin are singnificantly different in case India Wins/Loses.

Technically, runs scored by Sachin is a function of Result of the match. In English, this means that runs scored by Sachin influence the result of the match when India bats first.

On the other hand, when India bats second the above relation does not hold true. Which means that whether Sachin plays well or not, has a little impact on the result of the match while the team is chasing a score. As a corollary, Sachin's performance is of little help when the challenge is to chase targets.

Method: Chi-square analysis

Below is the Chi-square analysis of the above data

This tells us that Sachin playing well is not a significant factor in deciding the result of the match when India is batting second, whereas he is a factor when India bats first. The essence is that, though Sachin is a good player and the team can use his batting to build a formidable score in the first innings, but one cannot rely on him if the its a chasing game.

Aspiring Statisticians may take up the following analysis -

Whether Sachin's performance is a factor of runs scored by the opponent or target scores ?

Hypothesis to be proven/disproven: Sachin gets out cheaply whenever there is a high target or difficult opponent.

Epilogue: People like Big B and Sachin are beyond statistics or records - they are great not because of their deeds but because of their attitude. Sachin is an iconoclast in his own right rising from middle class background making the nation proud.

On Ganguly: In the debate on Ganguly my two cents go like this - "Ganguly being India's most successful skipper deserved a better treatment than this one. And for more reasons that one I am against letting Greg Chappel play his game of crucifixion with the Indian team. For all we know, the problem may not be Ganguly's ego but rather of the Coach. Of course, only time will tell whether there are more on his hit-list"