Former Pakistan captain, Salman Butt, has responded to Ricky Ponting’s comments about Indian batter, Suryakumar Yadav, saying he has just started his international cricket and cannot be compared to legendary AB de Villiers.
Butt stated on his YouTube channel that Yadav is a talented player who has performed well so far, but he has not done well in a major tournament, so the former Australia captain should have waited for some time.
Earlier this week, the two-time World Cup-winning captain compared Suryakumar to the former South African captain, saying he is a 360-degree batter, much like AB de Villiers in his prime.
While appreciating AB de Villiers, Butt said, “The kind of cricket AB de Villiers played, I feel no one in even recent history has ever played like him. With the kind of impact he had, opposition teams knew that if you cannot dismiss him you cannot win the match.”
The Indian batter has played 13 ODIs and 23 T20Is so far, scoring 340 and 672 respectively, and his average in white-ball cricket is almost 40 while he has yet to play red-ball cricket.
Suryakumar Yadav is only a few points behind Babar Azam for the top spot in the shortest format despite having played only a handful of games, raising eyebrows of ICC’s ranking criteria.
“There is Root, Williamson, and Kohli as well who have been world no.1 batters and have scored incredible hundreds. Rohit Sharma has scored 250 runs in ODIs. So, maybe Ponting had a jet lag,” Butt concluded.
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