HOW THE NUMBERS STACK UP

 

 

All the four – Munaf, Dhoni, Yuvraj and Uthappa are relatively at a nascent stage of their careers and have a long way to go before emulating their more illustrious and prolific counterparts around the world. However, they have all shown early promise, and at similar stages in their careers, the greats had performed on a similar level. Glenn McGrath, arguably the gold standard when it comes to fast bowlers in ODIs had taken 21 wickets at 27.19 in 17 matches. Munaf’s tally is 22 from 17 matches at 28.68 a piece. Of course, in the long run the critical factor will be his fitness. Dhoni is no Gilchrist yet, but after 66 games both players had racked up around 2,000 runs (Dhoni 1,958 [avg 46.61] and Gilchrist 2,011 [avg 33.51]) and their strike rates are similarly stratospheric. Yuvraj, despite being off colour for sometime, has time on his side and is not too far off the pace that Ricky Ponting set early in his career. Ponting had 5,715 runs at 41.11 after 163 matches, while Yuvraj has 4,412 at 35.29. Curiously, Robin Uthappa has made a blistering start that sets him ahead of contemporary greats like Sachin Tendulkar or Sourav Ganguly – two of the best One-Day openers ever, but then they started opening much later in their careers. A comparison with Virender Sehwag reveals that his first eight matches as an opener fetched him 257 runs at 36.71 whereas Uthappa averages a similar 36.42 with a rollicking strike rate (114 per 100 balls) to boot! Well, numbers seldom tell you the whole story, but in this case they do seem to promise plentiful ahead!