Sachin Tendulkar Captaincy Record
India & IPL · 1996-2011
Career snapshot
Int’l Matches
27 winsIPL Matches
30 winsICC Titles
—IPL Titles
—Format-wise record
| Format | Span | Mat | Won | Lost | Tied | Draw | NR | Win% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Test | 1996-2000 | 25 | 4 | 9 | 0 | 12 | 0 | 40.00% |
| ODI | 1996-2000 | 73 | 23 | 43 | 1 | — | 6 | 35.07% |
| Overall (Int’l) | 1996-2000 | 98 | 27 | 52 | 1 | 12 | 6 | 36.41% |
| IPL (Mumbai Indians) | 2008-2011 | 51 | 30 | 21 | 0 | — | 0 | 58.82% |
Notable Achievements
- ICC Titles0 as captain, across two separate stints (1996-97, 1999-2000)
- IPL Titles0 — Mumbai Indians’ first title came in 2013, under Rohit Sharma, well after Tendulkar’s captaincy ended
- Least successful captaincy tenureStatistically the weakest win record of any regular India Test-era captain, a rare rough patch in an otherwise unmatched career
International captaincy
Test
Tendulkar first got the job in August 1996, at 23, and was removed within a year after a run of poor results. He came back in 1998, and that second stint went about as badly as the first. Across both spells, he led India in 25 Tests: four wins, nine losses, 12 draws, a 16% win rate, the weakest record of any regular India Test-era captain.
He never won a Test series away from home as captain. In his autobiography, he wrote about how much losing under his own leadership scarred him, singling out a Barbados defeat in 1997, when India needed just 120 to win and were bowled out for 81, as the low point of the entire experience.
ODI
The white-ball numbers follow the same pattern: 73 matches, 23 wins, a 31.50% win rate. He resigned in February 2000 after a home series loss to South Africa left him badly shaken, and handed the job to his vice-captain, Sourav Ganguly. He never captained India again. When Rahul Dravid stepped down in 2007, and BCCI president Sharad Pawar offered Tendulkar the role a third time, he turned it down and suggested MS Dhoni instead, a recommendation that changed the direction of Indian cricket more than either of his own stints as captain did.
IPL captaincy
Tendulkar led Mumbai Indians for four seasons, from 2008 to 2011, and the results were a clean reversal of his international record: 51 matches, 30 wins, a 58.82% win rate, comfortably his best return in any leadership role. It still didn’t produce a title. Mumbai’s first IPL trophy came in 2013, under Rohit Sharma, two seasons after Tendulkar had stepped away from the captaincy.
Between the two formats, Tendulkar captained India in 98 internationals for 27 wins, a 27.55% win rate, and led Mumbai Indians to a much healthier IPL return without ever collecting a trophy in either job. Almost everything else about his career sits at the very top of the record books. The captaincy is the one entry that doesn’t, and by his own account, it’s also the part of the job he least enjoyed doing.
