Former Australian captain Ricky Ponting has revealed his conversation with star Australian batter Steve Smith during the Test series against India regarding facing Jasprit Bumrah. With Bumrah dismissing Smith several times in the series, Ponting said that Smith struggled the most to deal with the star pacer as well.

Speaking on 7cricket, Ponting said, “I had a chance to talk to Aussies on what makes it so difficult. I’ve been seeing him for a long time, I captained him in IPL when he first came into the scene as a 17-year-old. I talked to Steve Smith, who has a good method of working fast bowlers out. He said that he finds Bumrah’s visual cues a bit hard to pick up than the most, and that it can take take you four, five, or six balls. Sometimes, you could be out by then. If you didn’t get things right by that stage when you’re facing Bumrah on a challenging surface, your game could be over pretty quickly.”

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Speaking on an episode of the ICC Review, Ricky Ponting said that it’s been a series headlined by the fast bowlers, and Jasprit Bumrah, in particular, made batting look the toughest as well.

“No doubt, it’s probably the best series of fast bowling I’ve ever seen. Yes, they had good conditions, the fast bowlers, for most of this series. But when you watched him (Bumrah) bowl compared to anyone else in the series, he made batting look so much harder. There’s a lot of quality batting in that Australian top-order as well but he made all of them at different times look silly,” Ricky Ponting concluded.