Often I have heard people comparing Gavaskar vs Tendulkar. This had become more as Tendulkar was chasing the 35th test century to surpass Gavaskar’s record. I feel that it is not fair to comparison. It feels as if letting Gavaskar's standard down. Gavaskar had faced the best bowling attack during the time he scored his 10122 runs. There were the invincible West Indian bowling attack, spearheaded by Marshall, Garner, Holding and on the other side of the world there were the likes of Thompson, Willes, Truman, Botham, Lillee, Hadlee, Imran. To score those runs against that formidable bowling attack is indeed exemplary. To be fair on Tendulkar, he too has faced a good bowing of McGrath, Warne, Murli but the main differentiating factor is that, wherever Gavaskar went he had a world class bowler to face.
Tendulkar is good but he is more of a liability than an asset. I would rather have Lara in my team than Tendulkar. Or if I get to choose my team after I have won the toss, then Tendulkar would come in easily. Tendulkar cannot bat under pressure. He will be on my team only if I (as a captain) decide to bat first.
Tendulkar has always played for his personal satisfaction and fame, rather than focusing on the team requirements. Of course his scores have been part of team's total runs but I never got the feeling that he held the importance of teams score higher than his personal score. This is evident from the fact that when the then stand-in captain Dravid declared when Tendulkar was batting on 194 he was frustrated but never made it public as the public had criticized enough. Even though India won the test, that test was more importantly know as the one where Tendulkar as not allowed to score six runs. Gavaskar held the 34 centuries world record for 22 years, I will wait and watch how long Tendulkar’s record will last.