Hard to beat Sachin's records: Ponting

He is chasing the batting benchmarks set by Sachin Tendulkar but Australian skipper Ricky Ponting is not sure whether he would achieve them and wants to focus on playing match-winning knocks for his team.

"It would be nice if he retires some time," Ponting quipped.

"I was asked about this (chasing Tendulkars records) in South Africa. He's been the benchmark for international players in the world," he said at a media conference on Wednesday.

"I think he's going into his 20th year in international cricket which in itself is a remarkable feat within itself. The records he has set in Test and One-day cricket would be hard for anybody to tame down the track," he added.

As far as he was concerned, Ponting said he would be happy to win more and more games for Australia with his bat.

"I will keep plugging away, doing the best I can and hopefully keep playing well enough to win a number of games for Australia. Thats what its all about," he said.

"It's not about personal achievement or how many runs you score, its the number of games you can win for your team. So I will do my best to win quite a few games for Australia in the next couple of weeks," he added.

The 36-year-old Tendulkar has scored 12,773 runs, including 42 hundreds, from 159 Tests and 16,903 runs (44 tons) in 430 ODIs after making his international debut in November 1989 in Pakistan.

Ponting, aged 34, has 11,345 runs from 136 Tests (38 hundreds) and 12,044 runs from 324 ODIs that includes 28 three-figure knocks.

He made his international debut in February, 1995 through ODIs and later played his first Test in December that year.