Yes, when you remove minnows you see that Tendulkar is only marginally ahead of Ponting even now.
yes, but still better, even though, he faced more of the better attacks/tougher conditions in the 90s
Ponting's only poor record in the subcontinent is against Ind - in fact is his only poor record anywhere home or away. He averages 50 in SL IIRC and something ridiculous against Pak away or on neutral grounds.
Here again, for you :
Regarding holes in the resume, do you take only performance against teams and home and away for consideration ? What about consistency through the years ? Ponting averages ~40 outside of 2002-2006 .... ( ~40 for about 90+ tests out of 150 )
Ponting also has the better average against the better attacks of the 90s. Apart from Australia Lara was not successful against any of the others.
Does he now ? Let's see:
1. Lara's record vs Aus >>> Ponting's vs good WI attacks ( lara ~50 vs Aus and ponting 40 vs WI till 2001 )
Batting records | Test matches | Cricinfo Statsguru | ESPN Cricinfo
2. though not exactly in the 90s only ( Lara played them till 2003 ) lara's record vs SL ( especially in SL ) > ponting's vs them
3. Ponting was better against SAF clearly
4. Pakistan is an interesting case as far as Ponting is concerned, on face value it appears Ponting is/was MUCH better against quality Pak attacks in the 90s, but a closer look reveals :
that in the first test Ponting played against them in Peshawar, their attack was without either wasim/waqar/saqlain ( akhtar was only starting ) - he scored 119 runs there , getting out only once
then in the 99 series, he had 3 ducks in a row ( wasim,akhtar,waqar ) and then scored an excellent 197
2002, waqar was past his best, even more so in tests, akhtar was the only quality bowler, ponting scored a brilliant 140 odd in the first innings, but fell to akhtar in the 2nd
certainly better than lara's record against Pak attacks before 2003, but not as much as the averages would tend to suggest ( lara wasn't a success against them when the attacks were real good )
5. Lara was better against England , both home and away
6. Ponting's overall record against India is better, but he's done worse than lara IN Ind where Indian attacks were/are actually effective.
This dance has been done. To give you an example of what I was referring to Ponting not getting as much praise, even at this peak: at the point that Ponting averaged 59.99 (and this after 107 tests, no small sample) Tendulkar was averaging 55.39 (in 132 tests). So basically the difference we had now when people are saying Tendulkar is far ahead of Ponting, for some reason. More interesting, if we remove minnows from this sample Ponting averaged 59.10 and Tendulkar 52.85. That is almost 7 points on average (7!). Now how many articles did you read about Ponting behind as good as Bradman let alone taking the lead against Tendulkar and how many do you read now?
As I said earlier, even in his prime Ponting was not getting the proper kudos IMO. It just wasn't going to be much of a selling point.
That was because Bradman himself said sachin batted like him and that got lapped up by the media.
