Ranking each test playing nation’s classiest test batsman in the last 10 years

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2- Ricky Ponting (Australia)

With one of the most asthetically pleasing pull shots in history, Ricky Ponting in form remains one of the most amazing things to witness on a cricket field. So beautiful on the eye, it didn’t matter if it was the lunging cover drive or a whip off his hips. Ponting was class. He scored 13378 runs that included 42 hundreds and 62 fifties. What made Ricky Ponting so good to watch, and so hard to play against was his ability to play all around the ground. If he managed to get through his first 20 balls without nicking off or getting caught LBW he could score anywhere. This made him a nightmare to bowl against. As an opposition captain not only could you not dismiss him, but is was extremely difficult just to slow his strike rate.

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1- Sachin Tendulkar (India)

The classiest batsman of the modern era, Tendulkar found a way to score runs in every country and always managed to look good doing it. He scored 15921 test match runs (the most in history) that included 51 hundreds and 68 fifties (both the most in history) in a test career spanning more than 20 years. What made Sachin's record more amazing was the added pressures he had to deal with. Michael Vaughn sums it up well when he says: 'The ground would fill up when Sachin was next into bat. He couldnt even go out to a resturaunt in his home town. Everytime he walked out to bat he had the weight of 1.2 billion people on his shoulders'. To be able to deal with this and still produce the numbers he did only adds to the class of Sachin Tendulkar.