Sachins back to back centuries in Bangladesh makes life difficult for Ponting
In the past couple of years Indian batsmen have dominated world cricket to such an extent that the outcome of the matches have never been in any doubt. Batsmen like Sachin Tendulkar, Gautam Gambhir, Virender Sehwag and Mahendra Singh Dhoni have been competing with themselves to show who is the best and this time around as in most cases Sachin Tendulkar emerged the winner in the recently concluded two match Test Series. Sachin Tendulkar top scored in both the Tests plundering 264 runs at a average of 132 and a imposing strike rate of 70.58 with 2 hundreds.
This time around the competition within the team and Sachin's superb show with the bat affected Ricky Ponting more than anybody else. Prior to start of the two test series against Bangladesh Ricky Ponting was trailing Sachin Tendulkar by 1111 runs and 4 centuries in Test Matches. With Sachin Tendulkar scoring 264 runs and 2 centuries the difference has swelled 1375 runs and 6 centuries in favour of the batting legend. While Australian teams are renowned for playing plenty of Test Matches and Indias known for just the opposite, the gap in terms of runs should not be a cause of concern for Ponting who is expected to surpass once Sachin retires. However the worrying factor for Ponting is that Sachins centuries in both the tests in Bangladesh has done lot of damage in his endevaour to surpass Sachins record. Ricky Ponting born on 19th December 1974 is 1 year and 239 days younger to Sachin Tendular who was born on 24th April 1973. Assuming that both of them retire at a similar age then it would be very difficult for Ponting to make up for the back log of 6 centuries in a gap which is less than 2 years and should Ponting get injured or lose his form momentarily then it becomes even more difficult for him to suprass Sachins record for most centuries in Tests.
With Ricky Ponting struggling to convert fifties to hundreds in the last couple of years and Sachin doing it with relative ease during the same period each and every century scored by Sachin Tendulkar in the coming days will put more and more pressure on Ponting. Australians too are usually very concerned about advancing age of players and in this regard even legneds like Adam Gilchrist and Steve Waugh were not spared and though they quit on their own they were under indirect pressure.
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