Ricky Ponting
Kumar Sangakkara
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Ricky Ponting leads 2 of 3 categories. Our all-time ranking places Ricky Ponting at #9 and Kumar Sangakkara at #11.
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The case for Ricky Ponting
Ricky Ponting was the driving force of the most dominant team of the modern era and one of Test cricket's heaviest scorers. He amassed 13,378 Test runs with 41 centuries and 13,704 ODI runs, second only to Tendulkar in both. A brilliant puller and cutter with fast hands, he anchored Australia's batting for over a decade. As captain he won 48 of his 77 Tests and lifted two of his three World Cup titles, in 2003 and 2007, leading a side that went undefeated across those tournaments. His unbeaten 140 in the 2003 World Cup final against India was a masterclass in one-day batting. Ponting's fierce competitiveness and outstanding fielding at silly point and in the covers made him the embodiment of Australian cricket's golden generation, and his combined run tally across formats ranks among the very highest ever.
The case for Kumar Sangakkara
Kumar Sangakkara was one of the most prolific and elegant batsmen of his era and a fine wicketkeeper for much of his career. The Sri Lankan left-hander scored 12,400 Test runs at 57.40 with 38 centuries, eleven of them over 150, and 14,234 ODI runs, the second-highest ODI tally ever. In the 2015 World Cup he became the only man to score four consecutive ODI hundreds. Sangakkara combined classical technique with a voracious appetite for big scores, and his double and triple hundreds anchored Sri Lanka's batting alongside Mahela Jayawardene, with whom he shared a record 624-run Test partnership in 2006. Articulate and cerebral off the field, he was equally commanding at the crease. Whether keeping wicket or purely batting, his run-scoring consistency across formats places him firmly among the greatest batsmen of the modern game.