Rohit Sharma vs Sachin Tendulkar Stats: Test, ODI, T20I & IPL

Both learned the game on Mumbai's maidans, both opened for India in One-Day Internationals, and both captained Mumbai Indians. Beyond that the two careers separate almost immediately, and the separation runs along a single line: Sachin Tendulkar's record is built on volume sustained across twenty-four years, and Rohit Sharma's on the highest individual scores anybody in the format has made.

Tendulkar made 18,426 ODI runs, more than anyone ever will. Rohit made 11,895 at a better average — 48.95 to 44.83 — with the highest score in the history of the format, 264, and the only three double-centuries anybody has made. In Test cricket there is no comparison at all: 15,921 runs at 53.78 against 4,301 at 40.57. In T20 international cricket, again, there is nothing to compare, because Tendulkar played one match and Rohit finished as the format's leading run-scorer.

This page sets the ODI records against each other properly, deals briskly with the formats where only one man has a record, and is explicit about the era differences that make the ODI averages less comparable than they look.

The ledgers

Format	Tendulkar	Rohit
Tests	200 matches, 15,921 runs at 53.78, 51 hundreds	67 matches, 4,301 runs at 40.57, 12 hundreds
ODIs	463 matches, 18,426 runs at 44.83, 49 hundreds, 96 fifties	288 matches, 11,895 runs at 48.95, 34 hundreds, 62 fifties
T20Is	1 match	159 matches, 4,231 runs at 32.05, 5 hundreds
Bowling	46 Test wickets, 154 ODI wickets	Occasional off-spin, no significant record
IPL	78 matches, a little over 2,300 runs	7,329 runs, six winner's medals
Highest score	248 not out (Test), 200 not out (ODI)	212 (Test), 264 (ODI), 121 not out (T20I)

Tendulkar's figures are final. Rohit's Test and T20I rows closed in 2025 and 2024; his ODI row was still open in 2026 and stood as of 22 July that year.

ODIs: volume against ceiling

The two numbers that matter most point in different directions. Tendulkar has 6,500 more runs and 15 more hundreds. Rohit has an average four runs higher, the highest score ever made, and three double-hundreds to Tendulkar's one.

Tendulkar's case is the size of the thing. Four hundred and sixty-three matches across twenty-two years of ODI cricket, at 44.83, opening for most of it, in an era with one new ball, slower pitches and a single fielding restriction. He was player of the tournament at the 2003 World Cup with 673 runs, which was the record for a single edition for twenty years. And in February 2010 at Gwalior, at 36, he made the first double-century in the format's history — a barrier that had stood unbroken for thirty-nine years and has since been passed a number of times.

Rohit's case is what he did once the barrier was down. His 264 against Sri Lanka at Eden Gardens in November 2014 is still the highest ODI innings anybody has played. He is the only batter with three ODI doubles — 209 against Australia at Bengaluru in 2013 and 208 not out against Sri Lanka at Mohali in 2017 alongside the 264 — and at the 2019 World Cup he made five hundreds in a single tournament, which nobody else has done.

The honest reading is that Rohit's average is better and Tendulkar's career is larger, and that neither statement is a rebuttal of the other.

The double-century thread

It is worth isolating, because it is the cleanest link between the two records.

Before 2010 no batter had made 200 in a men's ODI. Tendulkar's 200 not out at Gwalior was the first, and it changed the perceived ceiling of a fifty-over innings overnight — within eighteen months two more had been made, and by the middle of the 2020s the score had become a thing openers aimed at rather than a curiosity.

Rohit is the batter who profited from that shift more than anyone. All three of his doubles came in the four years after Gwalior, and the 264 took the record 64 runs beyond where Tendulkar left it. The rule changes that made those innings possible — two new balls from 2011, tighter fielding restrictions, and heavier bats — arrived in exactly that window, which is both the explanation and the caveat.

Tests: not a comparison

Fifteen thousand nine hundred and twenty-one runs at 53.78 with 51 hundreds, across 200 matches, is the largest Test career there has been. Rohit's 4,301 at 40.57 with twelve hundreds is a good record with a strange shape.

Rohit made 177 on debut at Eden Gardens in 2013 and then failed for six years as a middle-order Test batter, dropped repeatedly, averaging in the low thirties. India moved him to open in 2019 and he became a genuinely effective Test opener, which is where most of his twelve hundreds and his 212 came from. Even so, the away record never matched the home one, and his final two years in the format were poor enough that he retired in May 2025.

Tendulkar's Test hundreds came in every country that played Test cricket during his career, from a nineteen-year-old at Perth to a thirty-eight-year-old in Australia, and he also took 46 Test wickets. The comparison here is closed. The line of players in that format is set out in the page on India's Test cricket history.

T20 internationals: a format that arrived too late for one of them

Tendulkar played a single T20 International, against South Africa in December 2006. He retired from internationals in 2013, when India had played fewer than fifty matches in the format.

Rohit played 159 T20Is, made 4,231 runs with five hundreds, and was the leading run-scorer in men's T20I history when he stopped after captaining India to the 2024 World Cup. His average of 32.05 is unremarkable; the volume, the five hundreds and the title are not. He also hit more sixes in international cricket than any player — more than 650 — which is a fact about the format's arrival as much as about him.

IPL: same franchise, opposite records

Tendulkar played five IPL seasons for Mumbai Indians, captained them, won the Orange Cap in 2010 and finished with a little over 2,300 runs at a strike rate below 120. He was 34 when the competition began; his IPL career is a footnote to a career that had happened elsewhere.

Rohit's is the opposite. Seven thousand three hundred and twenty-nine runs, the second-highest total in the competition's history, and six winner's medals — one with Deccan Chargers in 2008 as a young player, five as Mumbai Indians captain in 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2020. That is the most successful IPL captaincy record there is alongside MS Dhoni's, and it is the single largest item in his overall record.

Captaincy

Tendulkar captained India in 25 Tests and 73 ODIs, won little, and disliked the job enough to give it up twice. It is the least successful part of his career and he has said as much.

Rohit's captaincy is the reverse. He led India to the 2024 T20 World Cup in Barbados — the country's first global title in eleven years — and to the 2025 Champions Trophy, and he captained the side that lost the 2023 World Cup final at Ahmedabad after ten straight wins. His Test captaincy was short and ended in a poor run. The wider record is in the page on India's Test captains.

Two global white-ball titles as captain is more than any Indian has except Dhoni, and it is the part of Rohit's record that stands entirely clear of Tendulkar's.

Verdict, split by axis

• ODI runs, matches and career volume: Tendulkar, and by 6,500 runs.
• ODI average, highest score and double-centuries: Rohit.
• Hundreds in a single World Cup: Rohit, five in 2019.
• Runs in a single World Cup: Tendulkar, 673 in 2003, until Virat Kohli passed it.
• Test cricket: Tendulkar, and it is not a contest.
• Bowling: Tendulkar, on 200 international wickets.
• T20 international cricket: Rohit, on a format Tendulkar effectively never played.
• IPL runs and titles: Rohit.
• Global titles as captain: Rohit, two to none.

Both careers are covered in full on the pages for Sachin Tendulkar and Rohit Sharma, the player directory has the surrounding generations, and the cricket in India hub carries the wider history.

Sources and method

Tendulkar's figures are final and come from ESPNcricinfo career records and the statistical summary on his Wikipedia entry. Rohit's international totals run to 22 July 2026, his IPL aggregate to 31 May 2026. Tendulkar's IPL total is given approximately because published figures for his five seasons differ slightly between references.

Records described as records — the highest ODI score, the first ODI double-century, most hundreds in a World Cup edition, most sixes in international cricket, most runs in an IPL career — are as listed by ICC and ESPNcricinfo record pages. Captaincy counts come from ESPNcricinfo captaincy records.

The discussion of era is interpretive. The rule changes named — two new balls from 2011 and the reworking of fielding restrictions — are matters of record, but no adjustment is applied to either man's average, and the claim that those changes explain part of the difference is an argument rather than a measurement. Figures current as of 27 August 2026.