The story in numbers

The 2004-05 season has been a miserable one for the India team, but suddenly it's been lit up by two personal milestones being achieved in successive days by two of India's greatest cricketers: on the first day of the Dhaka Test against Bangladesh, Anil Kumble went past Kapil Dev as India's leading wicket-taker in Tests, and today, Sachin Tendulkar equalled Sunil Gavaskar's world record of 34 Test hundreds.

Both reached that landmark in their 119th Test, but as the table below shows, Tendulkar had a lot of catching up to do: he had 15 hundreds after 60 Tests, compared to Gavaskar's 22. However, Tendulkar's golden run from 1997-98 meant that he made up for his relatively poor start pretty quickly - by the 80th Test, he was only one behind. They both recorded their 28th centuries in their 88th Tests - Gavaskar against West Indies at Georgetown in 1982-83, Tendulkar versus England at Ahmedabad in 2001-02. Since then, Tendulkar has kept pace with Gavaskar - both got their 30th hundreds in their 99th Tests, and their 34th in the 119th. (Gavaskar's last century was a 176 against Sri Lanka at Kanpur.)

Tendulkar's century at Dhaka was his first against Bangladesh. It completes the full set for him, and he joins Steve Waugh and Gary Kirsten as the only batsmen to score hundreds against all Test-playing nations. Gavaskar only got to play against six teams, though, and managed centuries against each of them.

Tendulkar has been more prolific in victories than Gavaskar, but Gavaskar has much better stats in matches when India lost the toss, when, surprisingly, he averages almost 14 more than in games when the toss was won.

S Rajesh is assistant editor of Cricinfo.