India captain Rohit Sharma is regarded as one of the best white-ball batters of the current generation. However, his career in white-ball didn’t take off until he started opening the innings for Team India. He is now only one hundred away from equalling Ricky Ponting, who is third in the list of batters with most ODI tons (30). However, former India batter Gautam Gambhir made a bold claim regarding Rohit. He feels that the 35-year-old is a better batter than the former Australia captain Ponting.

To back his claim, Gambhir pointed out Ponting’s “s*** record” in sub-continent conditions.

“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,” Gambhir said on Star Sports’ Show Cricket Live, ahead of the second ODI between India and Sri Lanka on Thursday.

Even fellow panellist and former India batter Sanjay Manjrekar was taken aback by the comments made by Gambhir.

“You missed that. Breaking news,” Manjrekar was heard as saying to the host of the show.

For the record, Ponting scored just six ODI centuries in the sub-continent out of his 30, averaging 41.

Rohit, on the other hand, has scored 13 centuries outside the sub-continent.

Also, Rohit has three double hundreds in ODIs, the most by any batter in the format.

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