Indian cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar will begin his 200th and final Test match on Thursday against the West Indies in his hometown of Mumbai. The Little Master, pictured driving at Wankhede stadium in Mumbai last year, has set international batting records in Tests and one-day internationals that are unlikely to be broken. Indranil Mukherjee / Agence France-Presse

Sachin Tendulkar takes his final international bow this week. Tym Glaser takes a look at cricket's most prolific batsman of all-time.

I've pored over the numbers for so long that my brain hurts like one of Monty Python's Mr Gumbys. Still, at the end of many a long day ... and night, Sachin Tendulkar is statisically the greatest batsman to ever stand 22 yards away from a bowler and wield a flat-fronted piece of willow. There are, of course, lies, damn lies and statistics, but how can you argue against the Little Master from Mumbai who played more Tests and ODIs than anyone else while making more centuries and half tons in both forms of the game than any person ever placed on a green field?

You simply can't. The only areas he falls short in are average and highest totals in both Tests and ODIs, but if I was starting an All-World XI, I think I could live with those 'flaws'.

But here comes the tricky bit for me and why my cranium is throbbing: I can't come to call him the greatest batsman of all-time nor even the best of his generation.

To remove the first elephant from the room; another shorty, Donald George Bradman, is on totally different plateau to any stick-wielder that ever lived - and that includes you, baseballers.

His average of 99.94 is as seemingly untouchable as the Little Master's Test runs tally. Just figure this: if World War II had not interrupted the Australian's career and he played five Tests per year during that lost period between 1938 and 1946 - and he averaged his Invincible team average of 72.6 in 1948 - he would have finished his career with about 13,400 runs in 92 Tests, which would have placed him only behind Sachin - with 108 matches in hand!

(Now you can see why my head ails me)

The final pachyderm that needs to be expelled is a purely subjective and perhaps even pink one. And that's that Sachin is not the greatest batsman I have seen.

That honor goes to his great West Indian contemporary Brian Lara, whose numbers (131 Tests, 11,953 runs, 400 not out highest score, 52.88 average, 34 centuries and 48 50s) fall well short of Tendulkar, but 'BC' was a bona-fide match-winner whose flamboyant strokeplay, particularly those pulls off the hip, electrified crowds.