“They (Tendulkar and Sangakkara) are batsmen who made that adjustment across all formats quite easily”

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Legendary West Indies batsman Sir Viv Richards has announced that former India batsman Sachin Tendulkar and Sri Lanka wicketkeeper-batsman are the two players who can adjust between any format.

“It is, after all, all about making the necessary adjustments,” Richards wrote in his column for the International Cricket Council (ICC) website. “It is about being smart enough to know how to make those changes from one format to the next. Two names from modern day cricket come to my mind, Sachin Tendulkar and Kumar Sangakkara.

“They (Tendulkar and Sangakkara) are batsmen who made that adjustment across all formats quite easily. If you love cricket, you can accomplish that, and then basically you can achieve anything. I am not sure that many batsmen think like that in the present day.”

Richards also finds it “ludicrous” that batsmen nowadays are being classed as Test specialists.

“Today, there are certain players who are described as Test cricketers and others as ODI cricketers (or even Twenty20 cricketers),” Richards wrote. “I find it rather ludicrous. I wouldn’t want to be left out of an ODI team because I am just a Test cricketer and had only reasonable success in shorter formats.”