Maestros on the decline, and Pakistan's double-whammy

Sachin Tendulkar, Brian Lara, Adam Gilchrist. Three great batsmen who have adorned world cricket for a long time with their sheer genius, are suddenly in the throes of a batting slump which have forced them to join the ranks of mere mortals. Optimists will suggest they're only in the midst of a temporary slump, and while that's a tempting, and reassuring, line of thought, what makes one fear the worst is the age factor and the sheer number of years they have spent on the job. What do the numbers say about the drought of runs for each? Is it the worst slump for all of them? Have they survived similar rough patches earlier, and come out of it with all their powers in tact?

Among the three, the player whose career has gone through the most number of peaks and troughs is easily Lara. His has been career characterised by an amazing string of scores, followed by some equally dismal ones. Even he, though, will struggle to match the woeful sequence he has run up recently: 0, 5, 36, 30, 14, 13, 45, 226, 17, 5, 0, 1, 1 - 393 runs in 13 innings, but more than 55% of them coming in one innings. Exclude that, and the residual figures read 167 from 12, an average of 13.92. In fact, Lara has never had a spell where he has only scored one 50-plus score in 13 innings. In the first 13 innings of his Test career, he topped 50 five times, and has since then, scored at least two half-centuries over any 13-inning period. His lowest aggregate over 13 completed innings, though, was 260 - the sequence began in the Birmingham Test against England in 2000, and continued till the Perth Test against Australia in 2000-01, when he was one of the victims of Glenn McGrath's hat-trick. That sequence included two 50-plus scores, but also had eight single-digit knocks, including a sequence which read 4, 2, 0, 47, 0, 4, 0.

Tendulkar has been far more consistent for most of his phenomenal 17-year career, which is why his prolonged slump is raising even more eyebrows. His average has never slipped to less than 54 since his 68th Test, but of late, the consistency has dropped off significantly, with 204 runs in his last ten completed innings, during which period his career average has fallen by nearly two runs, though it's still a healthy 55.39 and almost certain to stay on the right side of 50 when he finally does decide to hang his boots. His poorest stretch of 13 innings, though, was worse than Lara's - 253 runs. Immediately after that, he amassed 495 runs without being dismissed, but the inconsistency surfaced again, with seven single-digit scores in his next eight innings. Like Lara, the ability to score big remains, but it's the lack of contributions in between those big knocks which rankle: of his 92 sub-25 knocks, 26 - more than a quarter - have come in the last 29 matches, which is almost one early dismissal per Test.

Gilchrist, though a couple of years older to Tendulkar, is easily the youngest of the trio in terms of cricketing experience, and this is the first prolonged spell of poor form he has suffered, with no hundred, and just three fifties, in his last 14 Tests, for an average of 28. Unlike Lara or Tendulkar, the slump has also dragged Gilchrist's average to below the coveted 50-mark, though only very marginally - a 70 in his next knock will push it back to 50.

All three have had a few poor runs in the past and come out of it, but the current for them is worrying not only for its duration, but also for the stage of the batsmen's careers - Lara is 37, Gilchrist 34, and Tendulkar, though the youngest at nearly 33, has been playing international cricket for more than 16 years. It's almost certain that we've already seen the best of all three.

Pakistan's one-day form has been fairly patchy of late, but on their current tour to Sri Lanka, they managed a feat that not many other sides have achieved over the last 12 years. After beating Sri Lanka in the first match at the Premadasa Stadium, Pakistan went ahead and repeated the dose at the SSC - though the Sri Lankans were admittedly hampered by the absence of Marvan Atapattu and Chaminda Vaas - making it an extremely rare instance of a team beating Sri Lanka at home in two matches in succession.

Sri Lanka have traditionally been a strong force in one-day internationals, but at home their success has been staggering, with a 72% victory rate (88 out of 135). Before Pakistan's wins, the last time a team beat them in consecutive matches was in February 2004, when Australia beat them twice in three days at the Premadasa. Australia, though, have whipped all teams in all conditions for a while now, so let's leave them out of the equation. To find out a previous instance of a single team beating Sri Lanka twice in a row in Sri Lanka, you'll have to go back a really long way - 4228 days, to be precise. The team that managed it was again Pakistan, when they won by five wickets at the SSC, and then again by 27 runs at the Premadasa. In fact, a couple of weeks prior to that they had won by 19 runs, making it the last instance of Sri Lanka losing three home ODIs in a row.

Since then, there have been a couple of other instances of two defeats in a row for Sri Lanka, but they come at the hands of different teams, not the same one: in August 1999, India and Australia beat Sri Lanka in successive matches of the Aiwa Cup, while Sri Lanka lost the final of the Nidahas Cup in 1998 to India, and then the first match of the Aiwa Cup to Australia - they were consecutive home games for Sri Lanka, though separated by more than a year. (Click here for Sri Lanka's results in all home games.)