Former Pakistan pacer Shoaib Akhtar praised the Indian cricket great Sachin Tendulkar and called him a 'tough batter'. He also explained the reason behind the appreciation of Sachin in a chat with former India head coach Ravi Shastri.

Tendulkar, who played 200 Tests, 463 ODIs, and 1 T20I, is the only batter to score 100 hundreds in international cricket. Akhtar, on his YouTube channel, said that the Indian legend faced few of the finest bowlers in cricket history.

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The 46-year-old also added that Tendulkar would have scored one lakh runs if there were reviews during his time. "You have two new balls. You have made the rules stricter. You give so much leverage to batsmen nowadays. You now allow three reviews. If we had three reviews during the time of Sachin, he would have made 1 lakh runs," he said.

“I really pity him. The reason I pity Sachin is he initially played against Wasim (Akram) and Waqar (Younis), he played against Shane Warne, then he faced (Brett) Lee and Shoaib (Akhtar), and later he played the next generation of fast bowlers. That's why I call him a very tough batsman,” he added.

Akhtar feels cricket has now tilted more towards the batters, unlike their times when bowlers used to dominate. “It's very batting-oriented cricket nowadays. Earlier, As a batsman, even you would enjoy fast bowlers approaching you with hair flying, bowling bouncers," he said.

Shastri came up with a suggestion to balance the competition between bat and ball. He wants the number of bouncers per over to be increased in limited-overs cricket.

“If you've to balance, you shouldn't restrict an over to 2 bouncers. Increase them. The reason why I say this is because it's exciting,” said Shastri.