Lords of hyperbolic posting from both sides here.
For me, the 90s bowlers overall were better and I still don't think any of these 3 have shown the levels of batsmanship we saw from SAchin and Lara at the same age. Having said that, this is not like the 2000s when the bowling standards were ridiculously low (bar Steyn in the later half and McWarne/Murali in the first half). I think a combination of the emergence of some really good bowlers (guys like Harris will never be given the credit he deserves because of his late start and relatively short career) as well as how extreme the whole home advantage situation is being taken by almost all teams around the world, means that these 3 batsmen have faced extremely challenging conditions, esp. away from home and will continue to do so. I am gonna agree with whoever said that these 3 will be below BCL/Sachin with perhaps KW being able to nudge above Ponting in a few years.
All that said, I think Kohli is the most Ponting-esque player of this generation and I will be very surprised if he doesn't make this conversation along with the 3 guys mentioned, if not surpass a couple of them in a few years.
EDIT: Autocorrect made "lots" as "lords" in the opening sentence of the post. Gonna leave it there for the giggles.
Since I made the thread he has 5934 @ 61 and 20 tons18 votes for Williamson, 8 for Smith
Agreed. Kane should end up a spot higher after a few years. Smith could end up higher as well but it’s unlikelyAtm: Sachin>Smith>Lara>Ponting>Kane>Root
Oh at peak? Then Smith>Lara>Ponting>SachinOut of the current lot Smith comes closest to Tendulkar, Lara and Ponting. In fact, peak Smith can be a bigger headache than those three legends, a statistical freak.