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View Full Version : Ponting blunders and Australia suffer



Win2Win Racing
22nd July 2010, 08:25
The Edgbaston Ashes Test of 2005. Australia had just just hammered England at Lord’s and Ricky Ponting won the toss. The sun was shining brightly over a flat wicket in Birmingham and conditions were ideal for batting. So Ponting, wishing to put the put into England, chose to have a bowl.

http://www.thecricketblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Ricky-Ponting_3.jpg (http://www.thecricketblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Ricky-Ponting_3.jpg)Ricky Ponting wasn't looking, or feeling, this smug after another shocking decision having won the toss - his side was dismissed for 88 by Pakistan.




The Headingley Test of 2010. Australia had just hammered Pakistan at Lord’s and Ricky Ponting won the toss. A cracked pitch with conditions seemingly in favour of the bowlers. Ponting chose to bat.

Whilst the 2005 Edgbaston Test went famously down to the wire after England made a complete mockery of Ponting’s decision, Pakistan blitzed Australia for 88.

Tim Paine top scored with 17. Extras, that usually forgotten 12th man, chipped in with a handsome eight runs. Ponting himself continued his poor form with an uneasily constructed innings of six runs. Is this the beginning of the end for the Australian captain?

There are only 120-odd days until the first Ashes Test in Brisbane and Ponting’s star is visibly on the wane. Once formidable against short pitched bowling, he now looks vulnerable. Once assured in his decision making, he now appears to stutter.

Should his Australian team fail to win back the Ashes this winter then Ponting will surely be ousted as skipper. Decisions such as those made at Edgbaston and Headingley will do nothing to assist his cause.

For the rest of the cricketing world there will surely not be a great deal of sympathy for Australia or Ponting. Questions have always hung over his tenure and it has been with envious eyes that the rest of the world has watched its finest try to compete with teams boasting totemic figures such as McGrath, Warne, Waugh, Ponting himself, Gilchrist et al.

They have enjoyed such a lengthy tenure at the top of cricket’s world order, and not always with the grace and good manner of worthy champions, that now the time for change is obvious many will witness with it with a wry smile.

The sight of a Pakistan team still reeling from recent events at board and captaincy level rolling the Aussies over for a meagre 88 inside the first two sessions of the second Test will have brought a great ear-to-ear grin on many a Yorkshireman’s face at Headingley – and not just those with Pakistani origins.

By Miles Reucroft

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Win2Win
22nd July 2010, 08:40
I don't understand why Ponting decided to bat first :doh .... ah well, if they play like that in the Ashes... fine with me :thumbs