Speaking his mind

Greg Chappell has probably never met a microphone he did not like. One of his best qualities is also his worst one - the man likes to talk about what he does and why he wants to do it. Consequently, he is everyone's favourite whipping horse these days.

He talks in great detail in this interview on a variety of issues (the interview is on three pages so click on the links at the bottom of the page to get to the other two pages). He has this interesting tidbit to share about Suresh Raina:

He is a complete package, for god's sake. You guys didn't do him a good turn by comparing him with Sachin Tendulkar after he had played one or two brilliant knocks. However, if you look at Sachin's record in his first 30-35 ODIs and compare it with Raina's you will not find much difference.

So is that true, you ask?

Well, I did some research and found that after 30 and then 36 ODI's (which is how many Raina has played so far) this is how the two stack up:

After 30 matches:
29 innings, 825 runs, 77 highest score, 31.73 average, 7 50's.
23 innings, 553 runs, 81* highest score, 30.72 average, 3 50's.

After 36 matches:
34 innings, 1075 runs, 81 highest score, 35.83 average, 10 50's.
28 innings, 612 runs, 81* highest score, 26.60 average 3 50's.

We do know that Raina slumped towards the end of his tenure with the Indian team, but otherwise his stats do seem to match Chappell's claims.