Tendulkar will have fun his fiftieth birthday on April 24, and Ponting recalled his battles towards the Indian maestro throughout his days as an Australia participant and captain.
However, Ponting stopped in need of drawing any comparisons between Tendulkar and Virat Kohli ahead of the latter ends his global profession.
“I’ve said forever, Sachin’s technically the best batsman 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,” Ponting stated at the ‘ICC Review’ at the eve of Tendulkar’s fiftieth birthday.
“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, on the other hand, refused to be drawn into evaluating Tendulkar and Kohli simply but.
“Trying to compare the times and I know Virat played a little bit in the back end of when Sachin played, but it is a bit of a different game now,” stated Ponting.
“There’s different rules, for instance, around 50-over cricket, with less fielders outside the circle, two new balls, it makes it a lot easier now for batting than probably ever before. There’s no doubt that the bats have got better. Field Restrictions and new balls are a big part of it as well,” opined Ponting.
He indicated that throughout Tendulkar’s generation, dealing with the outdated ball, which used to be opposite swinging, used to be certainly a tricky activity.
“When Sachin was playing ODIs, the ball at the end of a 50-over game was very hard to see. It was very soft. It was very hard to hit, it swung reverse. You don’t see that at all in the modern 50-over game,” stated Ponting.
The World Cup-winning captain, who performed 168 Tests for Australia, added {that a} truthful comparability between the 2 giants of Indian cricket may well be made as soon as Kohli calls time on his global profession.
“Virat’s got all that (time) 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 (centuries), didn’t he? Let’s wait till Virat’s career is over and then I think it’ll be a much fairer comparison.”
Ponting feels longevity within the recreation is a huge parameter to pass judgement on a participant and Tendulkar, having performed for greater than twenty years, is prime up within the pecking order.
Tendulkar performed 200 Tests and 463 ODIs throughout the duration, scoring 51 and 49 centuries respectively within the two codecs and holds the respect of being the very best run-getter of all-time.
“I always like to judge the quality of players on their longevity in the game. I think that’s the best way to judge players because maintaining such a higher level of excellence for so long is the hardest thing to do.
“Some gamers can are available in and do it for 3 or 4 years and seem like the most productive gamers on the earth, however the very, highest maintain it for lengthy sessions of time and Sachin sustained it for greater than two decades on the global stage .”
Recalling Tendulkar’s 241 against Australia at the SCG during the drawn fourth Test of the 2003–04 series, Ponting, who was a part of Steve Waugh’s side then, said it was an awe-inspiring watching the Indian player’s straight drives.
“I believe his immediately riding used to be his perfect shot. Whether it’s on entrance foot and even again foot — as a result of he used to be brief in stature, he may not thoughts me pronouncing that — he used to be ready to kind of rise up on best of the jump of the ball and punch it go into reverse the bottom, off the entrance foot or again foot.”
That marathon innings helped the Sourav Ganguly-led side post 705 for seven declared. Tendulkar remained unbeaten on 60 in the second innings.
“The trademark stuff you take into consideration with Tendulkar used to be simply seeing the entire face of that bat coming immediately go into reverse the road of the ball and immediately again previous the bowler. So I believe that’d be his trademark needless to say.”
(With company inputs)