Ponting: Down But Not Out | Thebigtip

As Ricky Ponting’s form slump continues and pressure on his captaincy and spot in the side mount, common consensus is that we are seeing the career of such a wonderful batsman fade away on rather unspectacular terms. No matter what way you look at his return of 113 runs from eight innings at 16.14 this summer, it is a long way from his career average of 50+ and his own personal high standards that we come to expect of him.

In the midst of a dreadful all round batting display from the Australian team, the captain, in all reality, has had the worst run of luck of the lot. Twice he has been out from a feather down the leg side. Another two times he was on the receiving end of absolute gems, first from Anderson's first ball in Adelaide and then from Tremlett in Melbourne. Add to that Collingwood’s amazing catch in Perth. When these are compared to the quite often loose batting of the rest of the top order, the doom and gloom surround Ponting via the media would more appropriately be put onto Clarke and co.   

Overnight the little master, Sachin Tendulkar, brought up his 51^st test century against the South Africans at Cape Town. Approaching his 38^th birthday in April, this amazing run machine shows no time of slowing down anytime soon, moving beyond 14,500 test runs. Of the modern crop of players, Ponting is one of the few who are deserved of being mentioned in the same breath as this run getting machine. It is hard to think of a time when his powers were blunted. In fact, we only have to back to 2006. During the 8 tests that year, Tendulkar only managed one 50 and a total of 267 runs at an average of a miserly 24.27. At the age of 33, his career hung in the balance. Since then,, the master has refound his touch and is playing as good as ever. In the 43 matches since Sachin has gone on to average a herculean 62.89 with 16 tons.

Ponting, just turned 36, now has similar queries floating over his head after a dismal 2010 where, in total, he still managed a respectable 813 runs at 36.95. On the recent away series in India, despite not scoring a ton, he still managed three fifties in four innings against the world number one on their own turf. While he has had a horrible Ashes series, he is not alone in that basket and not many of the Australians are able to hold there head up high. Even the best go through bad trots. As Tendulkar’s stats show, one bad patch does not spell the end of an era. Both are champions and champions don’t go down without a fight.