Legendary West Indies batsman Sir Vivian Richards is of the opinion that Sachin Tendulkar is one of only two batsmen in the modern era who seamlessly adjusted their game according to need across all three formats of the game.
Richards thinks the other batsman apart from Tendulkar who can be lauded for his flexibility is Sri Lankan legend Kumar Sangakkara, who has been on a fantastic run of form for the past several years.
"It is, after all, all about making the necessary adjustments. 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," Richards wrote in a column for the ICC ahead of the 2015 Cricket World Cup.
"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," wrote the legend, who scored 6721 runs with 11 centuries in 187 ODI appearances apart from 8540 runs in 121 Test matches.
The 62-year-old Antiguan finds it "ludicrous" that batsmen are being classified as 'Test specialists'.
"Today, there are certain players who are described as Test cricketers and others as ODI cricketers (or even Twenty20 cricketers). 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."
