Surely You Must Be Joking, Mr Fletcher?

A Bleacher Report by the name of Mr Fletcher recently talked about the phenomenal run scoring of Ricky Ponting against the stronger sides and of Sachin Tendulkar bashing the minnows after his twin hundreds against Bangladesh. Tendulkar then went on to score two hundreds in two matches against South Africa.

And when he had toured Australia earlier, he had made two big hundreds and two fifties; one of them being an attacking 71 in Perth; where he got a poor decision else it could have been three hundreds. 

Ponting resurrected his poor season by capitalising on a straight-forward drop by Mohammad Aamer at deep square leg to score a double hundred and then a not out 80 plus that allowed his average to remain above 55 after it had dipped prior to the last Test against Pakistan.

Now, I don’t know who Mr Fletcher is, but I do know who Richard Hadlee is, and I know that he rated Tendulkar even above the great Sir Donald Bradman when the Indian team toured New Zealand last time.

In that series, Tendulkar made a 60 plus and a 160 plus retired hurt in the ODIs, he could have got a double but he did not want to take a chance with a minor niggle flaring up before the Test series which he has always maintained is the real test of a cricketer.

He made a 160 in the first Test at Hamilton and was in some serious form after that but his returns were just 49, 64 and 62. In those three innings his first error was his last but until then he had the crowd and the commentators enthralled by some amazing stroke-play.    

There is a difference of almost 11 runs in the home and away average of Ponting, the home being higher; and for Tendulkar it is almost equal. Tendulkar is perhaps one of the few players who have won matches single-handedly and by sheer brilliance. There is a reason why Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath and Allan Donald rated him as the best batsman they ever had the privilege of bowling to.

Ponting took more than four tours and above 10 years to score his one and only hundred in India while Tendulkar got two in Australia in his first tour as an 18-year-old boy; one of them being the dazzling one in fast and bouncy Perth that made Merv Hughes give that famous gruff compliment while having a beer with his captain Allan Border.

Tendulkar has 93 international hundreds while Ponting has 68; that’s a difference of 25 hundreds, eight in Test matches and 17 in ODIs and this difference in all probability is going to widen because Ponting caught up with the Little Master during his three worst injury-scarred years. Look at the past three seasons and you’ll get the point.

In 2006, Ponting was trailing the Master by just two hundreds and Tendulkar since then has scored six hundreds over-and-above what Ponting has made.

The genius leg spinner Warne paid the ultimate tribute: “Sachin Tendulkar is, in my time, the best player without doubt—daylight second, Brian Lara third.” What can be bigger than what the Australian captain Mark Taylor said after the three-Test series in 1998 and the ODI series after it in Sharjah: “We did not lose to a team called India…we lost to a man called Sachin.”

No captain has ever said that we lost a series or a match to the brilliance of one man except for the tough Taylor saying this for Tendulkar. Someone as competitive as Steve Waugh said there is no shame in losing to a player like Tendulkar.

Tendulkar has averaged above 50 in 12 different years while Ponting has done that seven times and the whole debate gained momentum only during the injury-marred four seasons of Tendulkar. From 2007 onwards Tendulkar has averaged substantially more than Ponting in every single year. Twelve hundreds and 12 fifties are the spoils of Tendulkar 2007 onwards and six hundreds and 13 fifties have been the rewards of Ponting in Test cricket.

Only in Africa does Tendulkar average less than 45, it is 39.81, and I am positive given his form that the tour to South Africa later this year would reverse that. Ponting averages less than 45 in Asia and Europe. The lowest average for Tendulkar in any country is 39.81 in South Africa where he has three hundreds in 12 Test matches.

The lowest average for Ponting is 20.85 in 12 matches in India with a single hundred and he also has an average of 31 in Zimbabwe. Tendulkar has over a 1000 runs against seven Test playing countries and for the benefit of Mr Fletcher let me elucidate that the two missing ones are Bangladesh and Zimbabwe.

Ponting has over a thousand runs against five Test nations and along with the two minnows the additions are New Zealand and Sri Lanka.

The most number of runs that Tendulkar has scored against one opponent are 2748 against Australia at 56.08 with 10 hundreds and 11 fifties in 29 matches. The highest for Ponting is 2363 in 31 matches against England at 48.22 with eight hundreds and eight fifties. In Australia the average of Tendulkar goes up to 58.53 with six hundreds.

In four tours to Australia Tendulkar has never returned without a hundred to his name and Brisbane is the only ground where he is yet to get a Test match hundred among the Australian grounds that he has played Test cricket on. Ponting has played 12 Test matches in India in five tours and has returned with a hundred only once and that was the last time around.

In 21 innings in India, Ricky Ponting has got 438 runs and that includes a 123 and an 87 in the 2008 series that the Aussies lost 2-0; his strike rate has been 48.88 in India.

In 30 innings in Australia the Little Master has amassed 1522 runs with a strike rate of 59.70. In his horror tour to India in 2001, Ponting barely survived an over of Harbhajan Singh and got three ducks in five outings and survived a fourth as the umpire didn’t pick it. Tendulkar scored 490 plus runs in his 2008-09 tour of Australia. That is some serious minnow bashing.  

Tendulkar also has three ducks in Australia; with only the 2003 first ball duck where he feathered a Brett Lee delivery down the leg-side being a good decision albeit an unlucky one. This was reported after the dismissal at Brisbane in 2003: “After two washed-out days, and a tragedy for Steve Waugh, Sachin Tendulkar being administered an unfair blow wasn’t what the spectators needed.”

This was a rank bad decision that spoiled the series for him as Tendulkar scores heavily if he gets a decent 50 under his belt in the first couple of games. I’ve not seen the ball where McGrath trapped him lbw when he was ducking and it could have been a fair decision from what I’ve read about it.

In the 50-over game the Little Master is miles ahead of Ponting. And then there is the compliment that Sir Donald Bradman gave and invited the two grandmasters, in Warne and Tendulkar, to his home in Adelaide for dinner. Ponting is beyond doubt a wonderful player and he strikes the ball hard and is a master in dealing with the short-ball.

Tendulkar is a different kind of a player; he fondles the ball, caresses it, and when required, he can also pack a punch.

Tendulkar started in November 1989 and his profile does not show the exact number of fours he has hit in Test cricket as the compilation is probably not accurate but the sixes are 55 compared to 69 for Ponting and the average at 55.56 is just a shade less than Ponting at 55.67. In the ODIs Ponting has 1121 fours and 156 sixes. Tendulkar has 1927 fours and 185 sixes and compared to Ponting’s average of 43.30, Tendulkar averages 45.12 in ODIs.

Ponting has a strike rate of 80.53 and Tendulkar gets his runs at 86.26. A combination of the factors tells you that Tendulkar consistently gets more runs than Ponting and at a faster clip. A double hundred in an ODI is the new peak now.

Ponting’s average has been steadily falling in the past three years and would have dipped further to less than 54 had Mohammad Aamer held a straight forward catch at deep square leg in Hobart where Ponting resurrected his poor summer and helped himself to a double hundred.

Tendulkar having fallen in his injury years has been steadily moving up and it looks almost certain that he would go ahead in the only area where he lags Ponting by 0.11 runs per innings.

The Test batting average for Ponting 2007 onwards reads 38.40, 47.28, 38.77, 77.25 and for Tendulkar it reads 55.42, 48.31, 67.62, 95.40. In 33 Tests Ponting has made 6 hundreds and in 32 Tests Tendulkar has made 12 hundreds. Tendulkar has got a hundred in each of the four Tests he has played against Bangladesh but he has also got two hundreds against South Africa and three against Australia and one each against England and New Zealand.

Ponting has benefited from butterfingers while Tendulkar has clearly suffered a bad decision in the nineties that Simon Taufel apologised for and another one that Asad Rauf misjudged in Perth where the master was on his way for another hundred in Australia.    

Mr Fletcher says let the outrage begin by not picking Tendulkar in his team; makes me wonder if he’s done it knowing that the preposterous suggestion would give him hits and comments. In any decade and in any all-time XI excluding Tendulkar would be something that Sir Donald Bradman, batting at number three, would consider as a highly-unfair selection.

And writers respected the world-over and cricketers respected in every land have found a place for the Little Master in their team and their hearts. I can only say God forgive Mr Fletcher for he does not know what he is doing.