Tendulkar breaks Lara's records of most Test runs

BREAKING NEWS

New Delhi: Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar is now the highest run-getter in the history of Test cricket.

The Little Master broke retired West Indies batsman Brian Charles Lara's record of 11,953 runs in the second Test against Australia at the Punjab Cricket Association Stadium in Mohali on Friday when he went past the 15-run mark in the first innings.

When the match began, Tendulkar needed 15 runs to surpass Lara's record and overtook the West Indian legend it when he took three runs after gliding the first ball after the tea break towards third man off rookie pacer Peter Siddle.

He walked in to bat after India lost the wicket of former skipper Rahul Dravid with the scorecard reading 146/2and reached the landmark in the company of another former India skipper Sourav Ganguly.

Australian skipper Ricky Ponting was among the first players to shake hands with Tendulkar after he claimed the record.

However, Siddle had the last laugh he got Tendulkar to edge a ball outside the off stump into the safe hands of Matthew Hayden in the slips to end the Little Masters vigil in the middle for 88 runs.

While Tendulkar took 152 matches and 247 innings to reach the landmark, Lara accumulated the runs in 131 matches and 232 innings.

His highest score of 248 came in 2004 against Bangladesh and he has four double centuries, including 241 against Australia in 2004.

Lara retired from international cricket after the 2007 World Cup and had scored 34 centuries and 48 half-centuries and had been Test's leading scorer since 2005. He scored made his 11,953 Test runs at an average of 52.88.

However, Lara holds an edge over Tendulkar when it comes to the most runs in a Test innings. The West Indies legend scored world-record 400 against England in 2004 and reclaimed the record from Hayden, whose best is 380.

Lara had scored 375 against the same team almost 10 years earlier. He erased former Australia skipper Allan Border's (11,174 runs) name as the batsman with most Test runs in Adelaide in November 2005.

Tendulkar already holds the world record of most Test centuries with 39 tons under his belt. He has also 42 One-Day Internationals centuries for a total of 81 international hundreds, which again is a world record.

The 35-year-old batsman also has 49 half-centuries in Tests and 89 in ODIs.

He also hold the record scoring maximum ODIs runs and is the only batsman to have accumulated more than 15,000 runs in the 50-over format. Currently Tendulkar has ODIs 16,361 runs against his name from 417 matches.

Tendulkar made his India debut in 1989 against Pakistan at Karachi and since then has scored at an average of 54.02.