Top 5 batsmen with best Innings-to-Hundred ratio in international cricket

#4 Sachin Tendulkar (7.82 innings per hundred)

Master Blaster, after scoring his 50th Test ton.

With over 30,000 runs and hundred international 100s, few adjectives come to mind whenever we talk about the emotion that was Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar. Earmarked for greatness ever since his adolescent days, Tendulkar over the course of a career that spanned 24 years broke and set new benchmarks on his way to immortality in the cricketing folklore.

The first man on the planet to cross the 200 run-mark in limited overs cricket, Tendulkar started his career as a 16year-old against Pakistan in 1989. His match-saving fifty in the final Test epitomized the furor that surrounded his name in the cricketing circles ever since he set foot in Pakistan. Tendulkar didn't look back and registered his debut hundred as a 17-year old in Manchester and followed it up with twin hundreds in Australia in 1991-92.

If Tendulkar's fifty epitomized his tenacity, his hundred at the WACA would establish his credentials as a complete batsman. His promotion to the openers slot in white ball cricket in 1994 transcended Tendulkar's reputation as a brutal hitter of the ball. It was evidently epitomized in a plethora of his breathtaking blitz, none more prudent than the sandstorm assault on the Aussies in 1998.

Apart from technique and temperament, the third tenet that differentiates a competent batsman from a prominent one is longevity. It is this differentiating factors that sets Sachin Tendulkar apart from his contemporaries. His resurgence after tennis-elbow injury and the 2007 World Cup debacle demonstrated tremendous grit and determination. He showed remarkable consistency in the four years leading to the World Cup in 2011, the most productive being 2010.

It was the year that saw the little champion transcend to new highs, including a first-ever double hundred in white ball cricket to follow it up with a blistering Test double hundred at Bengaluru against Australia.

In April 2011, Sachin, the leading run-scorer for India in the World Cup, finally achieved his dream of winning the World Cup and two years later, he hung up his boots, bringing an end to a career that saw him score 100 international hundreds, a hundred in every 7.82 innings.