"Rohit is better than Ponting"- Gautam Gambhir draws a shocking comparison between Rohit and Ponting

Indian skipper Rohit Sharma has been one of the most consistent performers for India over the years, and he is among the best all-round batters for the Indian team. He has accomplished some incredible feats, particularly in the white-ball format, that other batters simply cannot match.

However, things were not the same with him at the start of his international career. Rohit used to be a middle-order batter in his initial career and had only two ODI hundreds in his first six years. But the career-changing moment came in 2013, when former skipper MS Dhoni promoted him to open the innings.

The situation totally changed from that moment on. He took the opportunity to the fullest and scored a brilliant century in the same series, becoming the third Indian to score a ODI double hundred after Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag. And to date, he is the only player with three ODI double centuries.

However, Rohit has also scored the fourth-highest centuries in 50-over cricket and is just one hundred behind former Australian skipper Ricky Ponting, who scored 30 ODI centuries and 13704 runs in 375 games during his career. Meanwhile, the Indian captain has 9537 runs and 29 centuries in 237 ODIs.

Former Indian opener Gautam Gambhir reckons that Rohit is superior to Ponting in the 50-over format. Gambhir stated on Star Sports ahead of the start of the second ODI that Rohit has scored most of his centuries in the last 4-5 years and that he was not consistent enough before that.

Gambhir said, "The surprising fact is that in the last four or five years he has gotten this many hundreds. Rohit Sharma before the last five-six years was not this consistent. He definitely got about 20 hundreds in the last five-six-seven years. No, he is a better player than Ricky Ponting. because Ricky has got a sh** record in the subcontinent."

The former opener is right to some extent, as Rohit scored 19 centuries between 2017 and 2020, and his last ODI hundred came in January 2020; since then, it's been almost three years that he hasn't reached the three-figure mark. Meanwhile, the average suggests that there was not much difference between Ponting and Rohit in Asian conditions.

Ponting's average in sub-continental cricket is 41, and he has only six centuries out of a total of 30. On the other hand, Rohit has 16 in the sub-continent and 13 in other countries.