Richard
Cricket Web Staff Member
The reason it's completely different in the Ponting case (not that Ponting's total dominance the last 5 years makes him better than someone who could relatively dominate against far, far better bowling like Tendulkar or Stephen Waugh) is because Ponting's failures are not specific to a certain type of bowling, they just happen to have all come in the same country. Ponting did indeed used to be a very poor player of spin, but he's scored runs against Murali, and there's not much more you can ask of one in the way of proof in that matter.and as a number of people have said, yes Hayden has his weaknesses, but why do his bashers only focus on those weaknesses. Have a look at the success!!!
Ponting as struggled vs India, does that take away from his total dominance in the last 5 years, loads of batsmen have weaknesses but the strengths outweigh them , and that results in big heavy consistant scoring, which is exactly like what Hayden has done.
Hayden's success, as I've said countless times, is success in a respect that, throughout most of Test history, would be unimportant. For most of Test history, being capable of savaging rubbish bowling has not stopped average players being exposed.