Lara, Sachin, Ponting - So, who is a 'Match winner'?

As we near Sachin's inevitable retirement from Cricket, we would perhaps be treated one more time to 'but he never was a match winner' debate.

Sometimes, Pundits even take it to the next level and say greatness of a cricketer should be measured by how many matches he wins.

A quick glance at Test results/Centuries of Brian Lara, Ricky Ponting and Sachin Tendulkar (3 of the best batsmen of their generation) should alone make everyone stop using these lines.

30 of 41 centuries by Rick Ponting resulted in an Aussie win (A whopping 73%).

Ricky Ponting - 'I score a century and Australia wins'

Sachin and India fare relatively bad - 20 out of 51 test centuries resulted in an Indian win (An average 39%).

Sachin - 'I score and century and batting collapses soon'

However, only 7 of the 34 centuries by Brian Lara resulted in a West Indies win (A paltry 21%).

Brian Lara - 'I score a century ...and the opposition start batting soon'

Does this mean that Brian Lara is not a 'Match winner'? 
On the contrary the win ratio shows how good the teams were and has got very little to do with the players themselves.

In Chennai in 1999, when Sachin scored 136 out of team target of 271 against Pakistan and got out at team score of 251, the rest of the team folded like a pack of cards.
One of his best test knocks, resulted in a team loss.
Maybe, just maybe, if he had an Australian lower order (A Steve Waugh perhaps ;) ) to follow him, the match would have been won.
Then we would perhaps debate if this was Sachin's best knock ever.

So, maybe next time someone talks 'Sachin was not a match winner', the reply should be an equally stupid 'Yea..and Lara was such a match loser'.

My argument is not that Sachin is blameless, (that's a separate debate - future blog post perhaps), but don't blame him for the failure of his team.
After all nobody would blame Iker Casillas & Gerard Pique when Villa, Llorente and Torres fail to score and Spain vs Brazil ends 0 - 0.