This is a simplification. I don't know how many times it has to be explained.
Tendulkar vs Lara against Donald:
Tendulkar played Donald in four series, except for the first as a teen he was dismissed twice, was only dismissed once in each of the rest. Scored two tons and a high class 97.
Lara against prime Donald in the 90s was dismissed 6 times in 6 tests, clearly struggling against the bounce. Then he played him late career in 2001, also never scored a ton.
Tendulkar vs Lara against 2WS: Tendulkar played his first series against them as a teenager on debut, and then in 99 when he was never dismissed by either and scored that classic 136.
Lara played seven tests, dismissed five times and never scored a ton.
In context, Tendulkar was clearly better than Lara against those bowlers.
Tendulkar against McGrath: Only played two full series in 99 and 2001 against McGrath, did well in both, 2004/5 was playing injured.
1. while Donald dismissed Lara more, dismissals to Handle Cronje is also an issue and reflective of a problem that would stand out with Tendulkar throughout his career, a ball pitched outside off stump that cuts in and he was absolutely not comfortable against it, the trick worked against him all the time and was used by James Anderson (9 dismissals) and Muttiah Muralitharan (8 dismissals).
2. Sachin did make 2 hundreds against Donald but still his average in the games with Donald is a very low 32, and Sachin got many tests with Donald at the peak of his powers, both home and away while Lara only played Donald at the worst point in his career (1998) and when he had his shoulder problems (2000), averaging so low is still a problem even if he made two classic hundreds.
3. once again, Lara played the Ws and failed in late 90s when he was at the bottom, Sachin played against that Pakistan attack at his peak and outputted
0 (3)
136 (273)
6 (11)
29 (65)
0 (1)
9 (13)
If he had gone to the end with the chennai test and won the game, that'd be something but sadly that's not what happened.
consistently struggling with Saqlain's quality offbreaks and being done in by being caught offguard by the doosra, Lara, once again showing against high class bowling Sachin didn't make much, even if he didn't get out to Wasim or Donald, I'm not gonna reward him for getting out to Cronje or Saqlain.
4. Lara is plain better against McGrath, even if you limit it to Pre 2004 stuff, Sachin averages 42 with McGrath while Lara generally averages 45, Sachin was given bad decisions in 1999 while Lara in 2005, and we don't remove Lara's 2000 series where Lara had shoulder issues so I don't know why we must remove the 2004 series with Tendulkar's tennis elbow.
all in all, I agree that Sachin was generally a better player of fast bowling than Lara but He's not all that achieved against great fast bowling either, he has one great pacer he scored against in late career but otherwise not all that against great bowling attacks including a great fast bowler.
