Ponting is mediocre?

[King Tendulkar]

Ponting flops in England again:giggle: Couldnt handle the swing/seam conditions once again

[f2000560]

i think dravid will end up with more runs and a better average than ponting !

[Bublu Bhuyan]

Ponting flops in England again:giggle: Couldnt handle the swing/seam conditions once again

Yeah, he is really going through a difficult patch. He now averages 54.61 in Test cricket.

[Bublu Bhuyan]

i think dravid will end up with more runs and a better average than ponting !

Dravid and Ponting are both contenders.

[Sachinism]

Come on Pakistan win this test and put Ponting out of his misery. KT if Aus losing this test meant Ponting got sacked, would you want Pakistan to win?

[Fontaine]

Whatever about his failings in handling the moving ball, I think it's a bit harsh to blame Ponting the captain. I mean put it into perspective. Ponting in the last few years has lost players like McGrath, Langer, Hayden, Warne, Gillchrist to retirement. If that had happened to an Indian captain, say Ganguly and we had guys like Dravid, Sehwag, Laxman, Dhoni, and Kumble retire within a year then the indian team would have fallen apart. Luckily only Kumble has retired so far, but there will soon come a day when Dhoni will have to deal with a team that is without Dravid, Laxman, Tendulkar all in a very short time. And ofcourse the captain's own form will be affected by that. Let's hope we'll be more patient with Dhoni than we're being with Ponting.

[Sachinism]

^^ Agree with you, but just trying to make the point, he's not a great captain as some people think because he has an amazing win record

[King Tendulkar]

Come on Pakistan win this test and put Ponting out of his misery. KT if Aus losing this test meant Ponting got sacked, would you want Pakistan to win?

Never Ever want paks to win. But if they have to win then better they do it against aussies and knock ponting over for low scores in the process:--D

[satishg]

Punter is my only source of joy today after i woke up to find out about our dismal performance. I was gutted to find out that Boss missed yet another 100 but at the same time ecstatic to see a single digit score under Punter's name :D

[Manny_Pacquiao]

normally a loss to a crappy team like pakistan should be enough to sack the captain, but i am not too sure the aussies will follow through with this. i just hope ponting is captain of australia when they tour india in october. B->

[The Outsider]

Come on Pakistan win this test and put Ponting out of his misery. KT if Aus losing this test meant Ponting got sacked, would you want Pakistan to win?

There is no way Australia are going to appoint a new captain so close to the Ashes, even if Ponting scores successive ducks leading up to it. His future is going to be decided with the Ashes. If Ponting fails as a batsman and Australia are unable to regain the Ashes, then he will certainly be shown the door. However, if Australia do regain the Ashes, even an ordinary show from Ponting will keep him in the side - he'll probably be given a 'farewell series' in that case. Of course, if Ponting scores then he might stay on for a while.

[King]

I think Australia will phase out Ponting very soon. Ponting already has confirmed he will have to look for a new job if he cannot win the Ashes back. To be honest, he should have worried about the Pakistan series first up. Still I think the Aussies are capable of staging a comeback, call me clueless but they are able to do so. The likes of Ponting and Hussey can still do the job with the help from the rest of the blokes. Pakistan had come so close to winning one of the tests in Aussie but they still didn't give up. If Pakistan can continue to win couple more sessions or three their job will become easy.

[King Tendulkar]

Flunks when his team needed him this morning. So much for the myth he does it when his team really needs it. Over the last 4 years aussies have been weaker then ever before. That is when they needed POnting to deliver, yet he has been mediocre and he has struggled to deliver under pressure

[Clayton Bigsby]

If Ponting is mediocre, would love to see the assessement of the Yuseless

[Bublu Bhuyan]

Bottom line - Ponting is an all time great. We Indians need not be sore losers. He'll always be much below Tendulkar, but still an all time great, none the less.

[Chorazin Reto]

Tendulkar and Lara are the modern greats with Ponting just a shade below them. Theres always varied arguments about Ponting's weakness to drift across his stumps and be caught lbw early on in his innings or Tendulkar's 2nd innings average or performance against the best bowler of his era(Mcgrath). The haters will hate, all 3 are greats of their era.

[SJS50]

I am amazed to see my post here shifted to another thread - Tracking The Gap - Boss vs Ponting I presume because i used Sachin's example of coming back from a relatively poor stretch of form to show what may be the cause of Ponting's performance. It is our obsession with Sachin's unquestioned (and unquestionable) divine right to the greatest since Bradman (some might consider even that an insult to the "Boss") that makes us see even the mention of the name of another batsman on the same page as the Indian Master as some kind of a challenge to his solitary spot on the highest pedestal. Sorry Rajeev but I find it childish and amusing. Here is the post I have posted there in reply. Rightly it should have been here.

The statistical error pointed out in my post is typographical. It is a bit cumbersome cutting and posting from a cricket stats site onto an excel spreadsheet, then removing matches for a period and matches against a certain side, then summing them up, then taking the columns one wants to use and then making a fresh table which is finally pasted onto the site. The basic figures (drop in averages and hundreds) remain basically unchanged, The number of Tests(mix up with innings for a period) is not that relevant to make the point which is that Sachin too went into a very bad patch and yet recovered. The same could be the case with Ponting and he too may recover if his body and mental faculties do not fail him. By the way, this post was not written to show Ponting to be better than or equal to Ponting. I took Sachin's example because they are contemporaries and their careers are both impressive and long. To read into it an attempt to equate Ponting with Sachin is to miss the woods for the trees but that, sadly, is a common problem on most cricket sites. . . This is also a reason why one stays away from getting into a prolonged and pointless discussion at times. The loss, I agree, is also mine but the feeling of bashing one's head against a wall is too painful for my old bones :-)

[Chalks]

I think we (except dsr) can all accept that Ponting is one of the finest batsmen of his generation, but a mediocre captain.

[Bublu Bhuyan]

BTW, while I do consider Ponting to be an all time great, I find it so hilarious to hear some of the young Aussie fan boys who started watching cricket after 2000 claiming how Ponting is better than Tendulkar. That's like Javed Miandad being better than Viv Richards :hysterical::hysterical:

[The Outsider]

I am amazed to see my post here shifted to another thread - I presume because i used Sachin's example of coming back from a relatively poor stretch of form to show what may be the cause of Ponting's performance. It is our obsession with Sachin's unquestioned (and unquestionable) divine right to the greatest since Bradman (some might consider even that an insult to the "Boss") that makes us see even the mention of the name of another batsman on the same page as the Indian Master as some kind of a challenge to his solitary spot on the highest pedestal. Sorry Rajeev but I find it childish and amusing. Here is the post I have posted there in reply. Rightly it should have been here.

Swarn paaji, I checked the admin logs and none of your posts was moved/deleted. I would guess that you posted in the wrong thread by mistake.