Superstars are, like it or not, an essential part of any sport. Any grand epic loses its flavour without its great heroes, its talismanic figures, and most interestingly, clashes between these great champions.

Of all the colossuses who have stridden the history of the game, Brian Charles Lara and Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar are amongst the biggest. For all their faults and failings, there is no doubt that they will be recognized as greats. But here’s the question that has not seen a clear answer ever – who amongst the two was greater? Or, let’s put it this way. If you had to pick a World XI ODI team and could fit in only one of these two, whom would you pick?

 We figured it would be interesting to add a new dimension to this perennial debate, and so, decided to slip these two through the SquadStats filter. This basically means, we try and find who amongst the two is a better player in terms of the value they add to their respective teams.

 We took a look at their averages in ODI’s, put it against the West Indian and Indian team batting averages in different conditions, under different circumstances, analyzed various other batting statistics and found some interesting results.

And possibly, an answer to the above question.

Why Sachin's excellent 50 to 100 conversion rate falls short of Lara's big knocks

The better 'Big Innings' frequency

Where Lara scores over Sachin 

(There is a lot of talk now with several big name cricketers following Gilchrist into pushing Cricket into the 2020 Olympics. But this isn't the first time the idea has been mentioned.

Several months ago, in fact a year and a half back, to be precise, Holdingwilley had put up an article suggesting that cricket bodies of significance make a serious move to get cricket a place in the Olympics.

Two cricket-related events have been making news in the subcontinent in the last two days, and both are connected to the Law. One, the overturning of the drug sentence of two years by the Pakistan board on Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammed Asif. Two, former Indian test cricketer and media personality Navjot Sidhu sentenced to three years in prison for a street brawl that resulted in a death, eighteen years ago.