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Cricket Players'Kohli has over 70 hundreds now. Sachin made a 100, didn't he?': Ponting's deal-breaker on Tendulkar's 50th birthday
Ricky Ponting has shared his views on the neverending debate involving batting icons Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli.
With Master Blaster celebrating his 50th birthday on Monday, legendary Australian cricketer Ricky Ponting has weighed in on the neverending debate involving Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli. While Tendulkar is regarded as the ‘God of Cricket’ by fans, former Indian skipper Kohli has rightfully earned the tag of being a ‘modern-era great’ by dominating the batting charts across all formats of the game. Interestingly, even batting icon Kohli believes that no player should be compared with the Little Master.
Reflecting on Tendulkar's incredible career ahead of his 50th birthday, former Australia skipper Ponting opted to settle the best batter debate with his noteworthy statements. The Delhi Capitals (DC) head coach rated former Indian skipper Tendulkar as the best batter he has ever seen in the game. Speaking to Sanjana Ganesan on The ICC Review, Ponting admitted that Tendulkar was the best player of his generation.
"I've said forever Sachin's technically the best batter that I've ever seen, and played with or against. Whatever plan that we came up with as a bowling group, he found a way to combat it, whether it was in India or Australia. It's hard to rank and judge players as everyone is different and everyone plays the game differently. But certainly through the generation that I played, he was technically the best player that I saw," Ponting said.
The former Australian cricketer observed that Tendulkar’s record of playing 200 Test matches for Team India is nothing but an 'unbelievable feat'. Ponting also opened up about Kohli's comparisons and said that the weighing up of the two icons of the game can be done when Kohli finishes his international career.
"Regardless of how many runs you make, how many hundreds you make, to be physically good enough and have a skillset set good enough to stand up and play 200 Test matches is amazing. Virat's got all that ahead of him just yet. He's an unbelievably good player, there's no doubt about that. He's got over 70-odd international hundreds now. Sachin made a 100, didn't he? Let's wait until Virat's career's over and then I think it'll a much fairer comparison," Ponting added.
Batting legend Tendulkar represented Team India in six World Cups. The former India skipper was a part of India's World Cup-winning squad with run-machine Kohli in 2011. The 50-year-old is the only cricketer to have smashed 100 centuries in international cricket. The Master Blaster smashed 18,426 runs in One Day International (ODI) cricket. Averaging 53.79 in 200 Tests, Tendulkar amassed 15,921 runs for the Asian giants. Tendulkar also played 78 matches for Mumbai Indians (MI) in the Indian Premier League (IPL).
