Sachin Tendulkar's 100th Century

In my opinion, Ricky Ponting was just a good captain.

More than being a good captain, Ricky Ponting had a team which was the greatest team of that era and the stars really contributed to so many wins. Once the big guns left, we could see even the great Ricky could not lead his team to so many victories.

A captain is only as good as his team.

Unfortunately for India, even though we had some great batsmen in the team, we never found consistent match winning bowlers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...y_recordsRicky ponting Captaincy records:

It only proves what I said.

He had a bunch of great players including himself and any one of them used to shine and sometimes a few of them together.

Statswise he may be great as a captain, but if you give it a thought about the quality of his captaincy when Mcgrath, Warne, Hayden, Gilchrist, Langer, Bevan all left, you may understand my point. In fact his batting downgraded at that time due to sheer pressure on his shoulders. I don't know if you watched the last Ashes series closely, when Ponting was clearly clueless as a captain.

Stats always don't tell you the true story!

One more thing that I observed in the link, Ricky has scored more centuries at home than away, unlike Rahul and Sachin. There might be a few others also, those 2 were on top of my mind now.

I always wanted to know what his stats were when he used the graphite reinforced bat. Also his stats after the bat was not allowed by ICC.

I agree with you Saugata and Aarosh but the question here is not whether Ricky was the greatest captain or where he scored his centuries , but whether his centuries and runs influenced the result of the match. Consider his performances as a captain and in the the 2 world cups Australia won under him ,especially the finals!
I go by your argument that Australia had some of the greatest players of all time ,under his captaincy , which contributed to his success as captain but then consider his contribution as player when he was a captain, and how much his performances contributed to the results of the matches which Australia won.

The fact is when those players left, Ponting alone could not carry his team to so many victories as he used to do (as you mentioned), his performance was relatively pathetic both as a batsman and a captain.

So it is clearly evident that he succeeded more playing with a great bunch of equally talented greats as he could play more freely. When the pressure got to him when the talents were not available, he succumbed to pressure simply.

Sachin is great in a way that he carried the expectations of billions throughout his career, and in the 90's he was really a one-man-army for India with a bunch sub-standard players around him.

Anyway, this argument can go on and on and on until someone presses the 'STOP' button. So let me allow to do so. Lets just agree to disagree on this one point and finish this Otherwise this won't get us anywhere!

Are we really disagreeing on anything actually? Ok lets atleast agree on what we are disagreeing, before we wind-up:

Sachin based on his records and figures is greatest ever and may never be surpassed! His God given talent as a batsmen is greatest ever witnessed on this planet so far! He deserves every credit for the passion he has for the game. He is great student of the game, and worked extremely hard to enhance and nurture his talent .
But his performances in contributing to the teams victory (in comparison to several others )fall short in leading the team to victory! He sometimes played more for his record than for the team! While batting in the company of someone in greater form like few times in company of Sehwag or as recently witnessed while batting with Virat, he threw away his wicket.
India has won many series because of his performances, but has also lost several matches because he had to or tried to get a 100, before getting out! That makes him not as great a player as someone like Dhoni , Gilchrist or Steve Waugh , Dravid or Ponting who have purely for the team, without caring for records!
Cricket is a team sport, therefore though Sachin is a far superior batsman than these , he is an inferior team player!

Happyhippy

I agree with you completely, except for this:

When you "witness" something you are seeing through your eyes and therefore the pleasure ("greatest") is highly subjective.

Cheers

Nattusbs

Not quoting your full post, I agree with you that we are disagreeing on some of these points

Man, who really cares who is greater or superior where surviving financially is getting tougher for us by every passing day?

Hmm , I agree with you I think ! And since no one "witnessed" all three Don Bradman, Gary Sobers and Sachin one can't be objective in a comparability analysis of their talent!

This is way to save your self from being depressed about stuff like that! At-least when you are sitting in judgement of some else's work you don't have to worry about surviving, and its far cheaper than

Please find another thread to in , this thread is only for passionate keyboard cricketers!

Agreed

...but I should have emphasized on the word 'really'. Apart from just using this discussion as a stress/depression-buster, do you really care whether Sachin is greater or Ponting is superior? That's what I tried to mean, hope it is clearer now.

If Sachin gives me some % of his next endorsement fee ,he is definitely greater , if not I'm afraid it has to be Ricky.

Jokes apart : who cares, really both have entertained us and made us happy with their skills and that's all that really matters!