Top 10 Australian batsmen of all time

2 Ricky Ponting

Ricky Ponting

Former Australian captain Ricky Ponting was the nation's best batsman during the course of a career that lasted around 17 years and in fact, he is rightly included among the greatest batsmen to have ever played the game.

Ponting's supremely attacking batting broke the back of most attacks in Tests and one-day internationals and made Australia one of the most difficult teams to play against throughout the noughties.

In 168 Test matches, he had a strike rate of 58.72 and averaged 51.85, which indicates that he was a batsman who often scored big and that too quickly. When that happens, it almost always puts the opposition on the back foot, and it is not a surprise that Australia regularly scored at around 4 runs an over during those years. Ponting is the highest run scorer in the history of Australian cricket with a total of 13378 runs and scored a staggering 41 Test centuries.

In one day internationals, he was an equally damaging batsman and scored 13704 runs at a strike rate of 80.39 and average of 42.03. He batted at number 3 in three triumphant World Cups for Australia and was the captain in the 2003 and 2007 editions.

In the final of the 2003 World Cup, he scored one of the best centuries in the history of the tournament and almost single-handedly decided the game. He was peerless.