The former Australian World Cup-winning skipper Ricky Ponting feels the Australian batsmen have made too many mistakes in the ongoing home Test series against India.
Australia started the ongoing fourth and final match of the home Test series at Sydney by trailing 2-1 and the visiting side India is very close to winning their first ever Test series on the Australian soil.
Talking about Australia’s fiasco in this series, Ponting has pointed out the failure of the batting group. He feels that the batsmen have made too many mistakes in this series.
Ponting told cricket.com.au, “As far as I’m concerned, this batting group through this series has made way too many mistakes. Technical, mental, whatever those mistakes may be, they’ve made a lot of mistakes. It hasn’t necessarily been the first mistake they’ve made either that’s led to them getting out.”
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He further pointed out that only one Australian batsman is in the top five run-getter list in the ongoing Test series and that too at the lower rank.
Ponting added, “They’ve made a lot of mistakes then eventually got out. To be fair, India have probably had the best of the batting conditions. The first part of the game in Melbourne was the best time to bat, and now (day one and two) is going to be the best time to bat here in Sydney. You look at the top five run-scorers and four of them are Indians and we’ve got Travis Head sitting at No.5 with 217 runs when Rishabh has got 350 as their keeper-batter. That highlights how little impact our batsmen have had on this series.”
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Prior to the Test series, Ponting confidently claimed that Usman Khawaja would finish the Test series as the top performer. But he has scored 172 runs in this series with the average of 28.66. However, Ponting feels Khawaja has played well in this series.
The former Aussie captain said, “I think he (Khawaja) has played well. He’s struggled to rotate the strike more in this series than ever before. He’s faced a lot of balls. He played really well in the second innings in Perth in a really critical position and got 72 in a good partnership with (skipper Tim) Paine that got the Aussies a big enough lead to go on and win that game. He’s the classiest player we have and probably hasn’t got the rewards out of the series that he would’ve wanted to.”
While the ongoing Sydney Test is the must-win game for Australia to save the series, the visiting side has put mammoth first innings total of 622/7 decl. To fight in this tough battle, Ponting claimed that Khawaja and Shaun Marsh need to stand up tall.
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Ponting said, “The important thing for the Australians is they have to bat really big. Even if it means it’s going to be a drawn game, they have to bat really big because if you look back to Adelaide and certainly the first innings in Melbourne, they let a couple of really good opportunities slip there by not making enough runs in the first innings. To do that it’s going to come down to the senior players, Khawaja and Shaun Marsh. The Aussies need those two guys to stand up.”
