(Photo by Sandra Mu/Getty Images)

3rd December, 2006

Ricky Ponting scores his 33rd Test match century against England at Adelaide during the second Test match in the Ashes series.

With this, the Australian is now just two behind Sachin Tendulkar. Surely he is going to surpass Tendulkar’s tally of 35 even before the end of this series.

27th January, 2008

Ricky Ponting finally gets to his 34th Test century. Sachin Tendulkar is now on 39. This isn’t going to be as easy as it seems!

Present Day

Sachin Tendulkar scores his 42nd Test match hundred, his 85th international century, his 18th score of over 150, his third in his last four matches, and the numbers just keep on pouring. Tendulkar yet again stretches the gap to five Test match hundreds, and the man Sanjay Manjrekar referred to as the “Elephant in the Room” keeps his steady pace.

He is still five centuries clear of Ponting, and over 1,600 runs ahead. If recent form is any indication to go by, the odds are stacked in the favour of Tendulkar extending his lead.

In their last six test matches or 11 innings, Tendulkar has scored 650 runs at an average of 72.22, while Ponting has been decidedly more mediocre with 483 at 43.9.

The Tendulkar graph is going just one way, and that is up, while Ponting is not having the best of patches. He is not in bad form, but just being inconsistent. Like Tendulkar he crossed 50 five times, but the glaring difference is in the "ducks" column—three to Tendulkar’s nil.

His conversion rate is also hurting Ponting. Off his five fifties, three have been over 80, including a 99 in the match at Melbourne, where he came amazingly close to getting a hundred in each inning for a fourth time! Scary.

That match, though, has been his best outing in terms of runs scored during this period.

Tendulkar, on the other hand, has scored hundreds against Australia, England, and New Zealand during this period, with two further fifties against Australia. In fact, in the last 14 months Tendulkar has had just one blip, the tour of Sri Lanka, where he scored a paltry 95 in six innings at 15.83.

He has been in imperious form against Australia, both home and away, and against England, and he has now begun in grand style against New Zealand.

While Tendulkar is going to get two more Test caps in this series, Ponting has only one more innings to look forward to in the current series against South Africa, which gives the Little Master a chance to further stretch this gap.

The race is very much in its final few stages here. With both men in their mid-30s, it is difficult to see Tendulkar going beyond 2011 and Ponting beyond 2012-13.

The onus is on Tendulkar to make it as difficult for the Tasmanian as possible to get hold of one of the most prestigious records in the game.

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