for me ponting at the moment has to be the best batting captin.

but inzy is not far from him

I think it was because it was posted when Trescothick was captaining the team in Pakistan.

The way Vaughan's knee is looking, it might have been a prescient addition to the poll.

Originally posted by saadadvanced7 Take out Inzamam from the Pakistani team...and there is an even bigger hole!

the problem in syaing this is that you could mean physically there is a huge hole in the team, or in a cricketing sense that they are missing a great player!! (hope i didn't offend anyone)

i agree with the fact that inzi handles the pressure best, but i think smith is one to watch for this type of person in the future, mainly becuase i admire what he did recently in Aus - he was worried that with an inexperienced team, some may buckle under the pressure, so what he did was kept the spotlight on him by those comments that he made(and no-one knew why - well now you do) for example he said that warne wanted to be captain and dissed him a bit, so for the whole of the match - the aussies were gunning for smith, so the rest of the lads didn't have too much pressure - he did have a dissapointing tour but it was very much like martyns ashes in that he was out of form, but managed to get into 20's, 30's and got out, and many times was given out wrongly - judging by how he coped in aus i think he could a one to watch for the future! maybe the mentality of inzi, but ability to be as attacking as ponting!

talking runs scored clobber, ponting has scored 5807 at 65.97 which is excellent in any1's books. no-one will ever be better than bradman no question about it, that wasn't the point anyway and i think most of us realised that..... My point was that take out ponting from the Australian team and there is a huge hole....

Originally posted by saadadvanced7 True. Ponting's form in the Test arena has been simply outstanding. He just keeps getting better and better. But he doesn't bat under as much pressure as Inzamam does. Inzamam has also been in great form with the bat...though not as good as Ponting. The reason for that could be that he almost always has to bat under pressure. He knows that his failure could mean the failure of the team. He knows that his failure could change the result of the match. When Inzamam fails, most of the times the rest of the batting order just gets ripped apart as well. But when Inzamam does well, which is almost always, the rest of the team is confident that they can do well. Inzamam is almost as good as Ponting currently in batting. And he is certainly a better skipper than Ponting, so that leads to me to conclude that he is a better batting/skipper than Ponting. The reason why I say that Inzamam is a better skipper than Ponting is that they both lead completely different teams. Ponting took over from a great captain -Steve Waugh- who had made the Australian team nearly perfect. Ponting leads a bunch of high class players...Gilchrist, Hayden, McGrath, Warne, etc., etc. They are the ones that are responsible for the success of the Australian team...not the captaincy of Ponting. Inzamam on the other hand leads a bunch of amateur youngsters. And before Inzamam was made skipper, the Pakistan side had already gone through a lot of twists and turns, so it wasn't easy taking over as captain. He took a Pakistan team that was completely hopeless until he was made captain. He took this bunch of hopeless, amateur youngsters and he turned them into a bunch of hardworking, committed, and collective cricketers. He has made the Pakistan team a top team.

You do realise that the whole "Inzy don't perform and Pakistan Lose" thing is a load of BS.... did they not just Hammer India in the final test with Inzy. And is it just me or is Younis and Mohammed yousef to extremely talented batsmen that Pakistan ALSO seem to rely on a lot...

The whole pressure thing is bull as well saad. If inzy doesn't perform, chances are Younis Kahn, Mohammed Yousif, Salman, or Akmal will, so please don't dribble on about "Inzy knows if he don'st perform they will lose....yada yada yada" because well all know its not true. In the SA series, if ponting didn't perform, chances are SA would have won the 3rd test, maybe even the series....

You also said it's not ponting captaincy thats winning them games, its the other players ??? pfffffffft take ponting out of the game and see how Aust. performs. He is the Greatest ever No.3 in the game... Captaincy is more than just decide to bat/bowl first, and deciding where to position the field. It's also leading by example, it's knowing when to put warne in the attack, or knowing that this batsmen has a weakness against fast short pitched bowling.....

That all being said, i think it's quite clear taht ponting is the best batting skipper atm.

p.s. why is tressy up there ????????? lol i think you will find that Michael Vaughn is the pommie captain

Ponting is ahead with Inzi at second place and Dravid at Third.