I don’t see this as as much about Lara vs Tendulkar as it’s about stats of Tendulkar and other Indian batsmen being inflated because of several attacks they didn’t have to face often, especially in the 90s. Have seen the same logic being used against Sanga, Viv and other great players to rate them slightly lower. Nobody had as many issues then.
The other world class Aussie bowler being ignored was present in 1998 when Australia toured India, do you consider that 1998 Australian attack a world class attack because of his presence? If you do, then you are free to consider performances against that attack as performances against a great attack too. I have no issues.
Regarding Lara being luckier than Tendulkar for not facing Ambrose+Walsh and facing Kumble instead, well Tendulkar faced Ambrose+Walsh in 6 innings - that’s some sample size for you. And Tendulkar faced them in conditions where Navjot Sidhu managed to score 200, and many other Indian batsmen made merry too. It’s hard to imagine Lara being troubled in those conditions. Lastly Lara’s average against India is so pathetic that I doubt if he would have done any worse against Ambrose+Walsh. Your exchange probably hurt him statistically more than it benefited him.
There are so many ways to slice this.
One way is to say only tests involving Ambrose AND Walsh, which I understand completely.
Another is to say that if at least one of them was present, along with Ian Bishop, then it's fair game because it's at least a challenge (Benjamin Franklyn or one of those spuds gave us a challenge anyway!). Of course the former PLUS Bishop is stronger than the latter, but the latter is no easy feat either.
And the latter was 12 innings across 8 matches, with an average of 62.8 (57.8 in the Windies).
There's also the little issue of Dale Steyn missing from the equation - arguably the best bowler of all time, whom Lara didn't have to face (again, through no fault of his own). But Sachin did fairly well against Steyn.
For the record, Ambrose has a poor average vs India - probably precisely because he got slapped around, why is this not held against him? On the other hand, Walsh has an excellent average vs India.
Again, my issue with this is that it's SERIOUS cherry picking. I completely understand the argument that Lara was more of a monster in individual series/had a higher peak than Sachin. I don't think you'll find anyone who disagrees with that, at all.
I'm not on for "Sachin averages X when McGrath and only McGrath plays, but Lara averages higher, but we won't account for Lara's or Sachin's averages vs the other best bowlers of his time"
The deeper you go into this, the more you start getting into really silly #AussieExcuses stuff like "Oh but Warne wasn't in form" and "Oh he had to eat dal because he ran out of baked beans that day so obviously his performance wasn't very good" territory.
The 90s Indian batsmen can't have made too merry by the way.
It is well documented Sachin had the highest average of the 90s - at 58.00 - for a considerable sample size. The only other Indian batsmen who had good to great averages were Kambli (prodigy turned out to not be so but he was on fire for a bit, plus low sample size), Dravid, Ganguly, Azharuddin (fair for all of them) and Sidhu (flattering him a bit I'll give you that one).
You're making it sound like Manjrekar and Prabhakar and co were all averaging in the mid to late 40s or even 50s.
This isn't the 00s, where you have a fair point.
