Rahul Dravid hits 10,000 one-day international runs

In a day!

No, just 66 today as India beat Sri Lanka. All the same, Rahul Dravid's still a remarkable batsman. He's always been slightly overshadowed by Sachin Tendulkar. Being only slightly overshadowed by Sachin is no mean achievement, but we wonder how things will look when they each call time on their respective careers.

Dravid's got about three months on Tendulkar, but Tendulkar having been the prodigy that he was, has played a few more matches in both forms of the game. Not a great many more. Dravid's played 107 Tests and 308 one-dayers. Tendulkar's played 135 Tests and 380 one-dayers.

Tendulkar's hit 35 Test hundreds to Dravid's 23 and 41 one-day hundreds to Dravid's mere 12. Tendulkar of course tends to bat further up the order in one-dayers, so this is understandable.

Tendulkar's also hit almost 5,000 more one-day runs than Dravid at about 45 compared to Dravid's average of 40.

It's the Test statistics that interest us though. Tendulkar has 10,668 Test runs, Dravid 9,174. Not a big difference and Dravid's average is actually higher - 57.33 to Tendulkar's 54.70.

In a sense it's pointless to compare the two, because taken against almost every other international batsman, they're streets ahead. On the other hand, Dravid's Test record seems to be going from strength to strength, while Tendulkar's is currently waning.

Tendulkar's greatest asset over the years has been his consistency, but Rahul Dravid just keeps on scoring. We're not revising our list of greats just yet, but maybe we should give it some thought over the next couple of years. See how things pan out.

We're sorry about all the statistics, by the way. If it's any consolation, we got quite bored copying them down.