KEY POINTS:
All the fuss in Mohali during the next few days will surround a man who has been treated as a god for most of his adult life.
Sachin Tendulkar, of India, needs 15 runs to become the highest overall scorer in Test cricket history, an achievement befitting his status in the eyes and minds of his countrymen.
But events in the second Test between India and Australia, starting tonight, may be driven by a cricketer who far, from attaining deification, has regularly shown defects that are all too human.
Ricky Ponting, the captain of Australia, will probably one day annex the runs record and take it beyond anybody else for at least a generation.
The careers of both have been remarkable, batsmen not only for their own but for any era. Tendulkar has scored 11,939 runs, tucked in just behind Brian Lara. Ponting's century in the first Test of the series for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy took him to 10,239, in sixth.
At the age of 33 - 34 in December - Ponting is 20 months younger than Tendulkar and so far his body, unlike that of the Master Blaster from Mumbai, has shown few signs of rebelling against the constant demands put on it.
Nobody can become the new Don Bradman - he scored a century on every 2.75 visits to the Test crease - but another Australian is building a sound case for being the Best Since Bradman.
As a captain, Ponting is creating a record of similar magnitude. Under him, Australia have won 73.3 per cent of their matches, greater than anybody who has led in more than 10 matches - better than Bradman, and better than Ponting's predecessor, Steve Waugh.
It is the ultimate stamp of a great batsman that he makes big runs on big occasions.
Since Tendulkar is among only five players to have made nine Test hundreds against Australia - one more would make him second behind the 12 scored by England's Jack Hobbs - it would be a stretch to accuse him of failing to make the most of himself.
But there is a quality in Ponting, a mixture of talent, desire, will and doggedness, that sets him apart.
This has failed to make him popular among the majority of Australians, who seem grudgingly to respect rather than admire him.
Nor, despite his frequently articulated intentions, have the Australian players become conspicuously less swaggering. They might be quieter, slightly, but they still play it hard, pushing the regulations to the limit. Ponting has been complicit in this; indeed, has propelled it up to a point.
The spat between India and Australia this year during and after the Sydney Test did not reflect well on him. By word, he has seemed to resist a win-at-all-costs approach, but by deed during that match he all but signed a contract to adopt it.
It was not so much that he reported Harbhajan Singh, his old bowling nemesis, for an alleged racial comment directed toward the Australian all-rounder Andrew Symonds, but that he informed the umpires that a catch taken at slip by Michael Clarke was good when replays were to show otherwise.
Australia went on to win a contentious match with eight minutes left. It was eight minutes in which Ponting might have lost the Australian public's backing. There were calls for him to be sacked.
He rode out the storm and, though his form was patchy for a while he seems not only to have retrieved it but to have ensured this team is as much his as ever.
Ponting's record in India was woeful until last week. His hard-handed, front-foot style had contrived to make him a walking wicket: 189 runs in 15 Test innings, out 13 times to spin. Harbhajan snaffled him for the ninth time in Bangalore but by then Ponting had made 123.
As the team left Australia, it was the burning issue. Only four of the party had played in India and if Ponting did not make runs, ran the argument, they may be sunk.
It merely fuelled the captain's craving and if he needed any more incentive it arrived in the first over of the series when Matthew Hayden nicked one behind.
Ponting was imperious and his 36th Test hundred should have established a platform from which Australia would take a lead in the series. There is a steel in Ponting which is impossible not to notice.
He may try to disguise it, but it is always present.
The strength of his ambition to do well can almost be felt across a crowded room but he seems anxious not to make too much of it.
This trait was at its plainest during England's last tour of Australia two years ago. Ponting was chastened by the Ashes defeat away 14 months earlier and although he never admitted as much, it became clear he had vengeance in mind.
When he scored 196 in the first Test at Brisbane, it was as predictable as a bank collapse. Immediately, the Australian papers unveiled their Bradman comparisons and, bearing in mind this had been his 10th hundred in 30 innings, it was truly Bradmanesque.
He made it 11 in 32 at Adelaide and when he was dropped on 35 English hearts could have sunk no lower had Bradman been reprieved. The captaincy has in its way been the making of him.
The innings in Bangalore may allay for longer the whispers that the reflexes and the eyes are waning enough to make a difference.
Like Bradman, Ponting is not especially easy on the eye.
He is neither languid nor elegant, neither graceful nor flamboyant.
But when he is in he does not look like getting out. He hits the ball hard and often. His latest hundred may be another turning point.
Whatever Tendulkar does in Mohali, it is now Ponting who is BSB - Best Since Bradman.
- INDEPENDENT
