Punter's frontier

[amit467]

ndia paceman Zaheer Khan [images] believes Ricky Ponting's [images] poor batting record in India is affecting the Australian captain's confidence going into the high-profile four-Test series starting next month. - Aussies follow the 'Chappell Way' Ponting is one of seven batsmen to have scored over 10,000 Test runs but the 33-year-old right-hander averages just 12.28 in eight Tests in India. Ponting last week said India start as favourites because they have more experienced players and Australia [images], the world's top-ranked side, are the underdogs. "I was actually surprised by the statement made by him, for a captain who is leading the number one test side to say something like that definitely shows that there is a lot of pressure on him getting into the series," Zaheer told a news channel on Thursday. "The reason can be that he hasn't scored many runs in India. That should definitely work to the advantage of us," the left-arm bowler added. Australia arrived on Monday ahead of schedule to spend a week acclimatising at the Rajasthan cricket academy. Australia won a four-match series 2-1 on the previous tour in 2004 to record their first series victory in India in 35 years. Pointing played only the final test, which the hosts won, after missing the first three with a thumb injury. Australia won an acrimonious four-test series 2-1 against India at home early this year. From the current squad only Ponting, Matthew Hayden [images], Michael Clarke [images] and Simon Katich have test experience in India and the tourists are rebuilding following a series of high-profile retirements. Zaheer said Hayden's wicket would be the key. The powerful left-hander averages an impressive 61 in India, plundering 793 runs in seven tests. "The Australian team definitely relies quite a lot on Hayden, especially when the tour India. It will be good to get him out early," Zaheer said. The first test starts in Bangalore on Oct. 9. The remaining tests are in Mohali, Delhi [images] and Nagpur.

[amit467]

Good to see indians commenting as this is usual for Australians to do this before the start of series.

[Desi Cartman]

"The Australian team definitely relies quite a lot on Hayden, especially when the tour India. It will be good to get him out early," Zaheer said.

SO TRUE ...Aussies always do well if their openers click ..

[amit467]

but one thing good about this Indian team is there opening pair of sehwag and Ghambir they can kill any bowling attack very quickly

[riya]

I still didn't forget that sensational delivery Zaheer bowled to Ponting in Melbourne .What a great delivery .Could he do that again ?

[h4te]

but one thing good about this Indian team is there opening pair of sehwag and Ghambir they can kill any bowling attack very quickly

and sehwag will score 400+???????????

[Dark Warrior]

and sehwag will score 400+???????????

yes. do u have any problem?

[amit467]

Mehuivj leave this h4te guy he is a useless he can only post negative comments.

[Dark Warrior]

Mehuivj leave this h4te guy he is a useless he can only post negative comments.

oh ok btw its Mehul.... :winky:

[Feed]

Punter's frontier In coming to India, Ponting is not simply on a mission to improve his abominable record there; he will be hoping to shape the game's future in the country destined to determine it. More... Punter's frontier For Ponting the India tour is more than a matter of setting his dismal record in the country straight September 29, 2008 Ponting has in recent times let slip an elder statesman's anxiety about the future of international cricket © AFP Preparing for his delivery of the Bradman Oration at last month's celebrations of the Don's centenary, Ricky Ponting carefully set out a prepared speech that at normal pace would comfortably fill half an hour. The hushed auditorium and harsh lighting of the evening got the better of him: he galloped through his words in less than 18 minutes. It happens, to be fair, to the best public speakers. Yet the story is also, as it were, Punteresque: when in doubt, or under pressure, Australia's captain goes hard, even headlong, about his business. Doubt and pressure now accompany Ponting to India. Of course, not even the most imposing Test records are without their soft spots. Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid don't average 40 in South Africa; Matthew Hayden averages less than 35 in England; Shane Warne paid more than 43 runs for each of his Test wickets in India. But Ponting's five-day performances in cricket's modern centre aren't just middlingly poor. An average of 12.28 from 14 innings implies that about the only thing he has been getting right is turning up on the required days. Theories, inevitably, have been advanced. Ian Chappell says Ponting is inclined to bat as he speaks - there is too much hurry too soon. It is arguable the conditions restrict him. The lower Indian bounce deprives Ponting of opportunities to essay his pet pull shot; nor has he ever been a confident player of the sweep. Whatever the case, he still has much to prove. It was Steve Waugh who christened India the Australian team's "final frontier"; injury deprived Ponting of a share in Australia setting that to rights four years ago, and he arrives looking for a vital validation. How will he respond? The likely answer is: by sticking to what he knows. Ponting has the classically Australian characteristic of not being a fiddler or a faffer with the basics of his technique or approach. He ascribes his failure in India seven years ago to tampering with the tried and true after a failure or two. Under his captaincy, too, Australia have played a brand of percentage cricket, convinced that quality will out as long as the game plan is observed. The scheme hasn't met with uniform success: Australia's predictability cost them in the Ashes of 2005. But with Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath, Adam Gilchrist and Ponting himself, quality has proven a wise investment. The team has continued setting standards worldwide. Even without that mighty trio, Ponting will be priming Australia to assert themselves, to radiate the *****ly, up-and-at-'em aura that he doesn't trouble to euphemise as "mental disintegration". Although it is a commonplace that Australia is the world's most aggressive team, it is actually more accurate to describe them as the world's most consistently and uniformly aggressive team. That is, where a number of teams exhibit aggression in spasms and phases, and certain individuals from other countries are inclined to throw regular weight around, Australians are better at maintaining a lounging, low-level hostility at all times. Indeed, one of the bones Ponting has picked with India is that their players appear to vary in their willingness to contest. He complained, for instance, when the hosts, chockfull of cheek in the first two games of last year's one-day series, suddenly took umbrage in the third: "If the Indians can play the sort of cricket they did play for the first couple of games and then completely turn around and go the other way in the other games, it showed us how fake, if you like, the first part of the series was as far as they're concerned." One of the reasons Bhajjigate festered on in January, I suspect, was a residual annoyance about what Australians see as an Indian tendency to periodically redefine the acceptable level of on-field belligerence. Thus Ponting's hankering to obtain an ICC determination of what was beyond the pale - not a wise move, really, considering the ICC needs a committee to determine the day of the week. How closely Ponting can hew to his old ways, however, will not depend entirely on his own volition. The cricket world is waiting to see whether Australia can remain its reserve currency, as it were, without the watermark of former greats. The absence of Andrew Symonds, furthermore, removes a huge, brooding stumbling block, sometimes sullen but always intimidating, in both Australia's middle order and its fielding formations: his physical presence may be missed in India almost as much as his skills. Leading modern players and the countries they average least in Dravid in South Africa: 504 runs (8 Tests, 16 inns) at 33.60 Lara in India: 198 runs (3 Tests, 6 inns) at 33 Inzamam in Australia: 494 runs (8 Tests, 16 inns) at 30.87 Kallis in England: 586 runs (12 Tests, 20 inns) at 29.30 Hayden in New Zealand: 197 runs (4 Tests, 7 inns) at 28.14 Jayawardene in New Zealand: 194 runs (4 Tests, 7 inns) at 27.21 Sehwag in South Africa: 238 runs (5 Tests, 9 inns) at 26.44 Tendulkar in South Africa: 835 runs (12 Tests, 22 inns) at 39.76 Minimum of five innings Ponting in India 1996-97: 1 Test, 27 runs at 13.50 1997-98: 3 Tests, 105 runs at 21 2000-01: 3 Tests, 17 runs at 3.40 2004-05: 1 Test, 23 runs at 11.50 Just returned from surgery on his right wrist, Ponting himself is a cricketer increasingly conscious of the limits of his own body; thirty-four in December and newly a father, he can glimpse life beyond the game. He has never really had Waugh's presence as a captain: where Waugh exuded a lurking, predatory toughness, Ponting tends merely to look surly. But while never as demonstratively patriotic as his predecessor, Ponting has let slip more often in recent times an elder statesman's anxiety about international cricket. In his Bradman Oration, he dwelt on the old-fashioned continuities of his upbringing - how his junior years were as concerned with community as cricket. For me they are the things, like the smell of Aeroguard, which is something that sticks in my mind about junior cricket. The smell of cut grass is something even to this day, I can still remember [...] I remember jumping on my BMX at the age of seven or eight years old and riding all over Launceston to find where my local A-grade side were playing. I was always the first one there and inevitably the last one to leave. I would sit [...] in the corner of the change rooms, listening to whatever the club legends of the time had to say about the game and to this moment today, I still feel that's where I learned most about the game of cricket. There was more, much more, in this vein. And although reporting of the Oration emphasised Ponting's (fairly anodyne) opinions about Twenty20, the context of those views seemed much more significant. For all his rapid-fire delivery, Ponting was, unbidden, taking the side of tradition in the pending debates about the game's future. Not even Waugh at his most sentimental dwelt so long on cricket as a local activity, and even as a rite of adult passage. Ponting recalled his youthful chagrin, for example, when the local park of his childhood insisted that cricket games be played with tennis balls: "For me that wasn't what cricket was all about. Cricket was about a cricket ball, pads and gloves, playing in the park, playing against kids who were a lot bigger, a lot stronger, and for me that's when my journey really started." Not a view much heard in these days of plastic balls, plastic stumps and inclusive modified games. In coming to India, then, Ponting is not simply on a mission to improve his own record; he will be hoping, by a memorable Border-Gavaskar Trophy, to shape the game's future in the country destined to determine it. "I personally look forward to emulating Sir Donald and leaving the game in better shape for having been apart of it," he concluded his speech last month. And granted that the circumstances probably called for high-sounding sentiments, and that pressure then made them fast-sounding, Ponting deserves in this instance to be taken at his word. Gideon Haigh is a cricket historian and writer

[hindu-Stan]

Pointing is working hard to improve his record. He will but not much. He might scored 1 hundred and 2 fifties but other than this he will fail to get two digits..

[Gambit]

I think he will do quite well this time. The correct approach for him would be to cut down on his initial front foot shuffle and play the spinners from the crease, off the backfoot.

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Ponting determined to erase India blot Australia's captain Ricky Ponting is hoping to score plenty of runs during upcoming the four-Test series and improve his pathetic average of 12.28. More... Ponting determined to erase India blot September 30, 2008 18:21 IST Ricky Ponting [images] does not gloss over the fact that he is a veritable dud with the bat on Indian soil, but believes he can break the jinx this time and erase the blot from an otherwise impeccable career. The Australian averages a pathetic 12.28 in India. "You are spot on," Ponting said in Hyderabad on Tuesday, when reminded about his dismal record on Indian soil. "This is not the place where I enjoy lot of success. There is a bit of void in my international career. Last time, I missed three Test matches with a broken finger and played only one," rued the Tasmanian. Things, however, might change in the forthcoming Test series, says the Australian skipper. "Hopefully I will score lot of runs this time around. I'm working hard and hoping to make a turnaround here. It has been a pretty poor record and hope I can rectify that this time," Ponting said. In absence of Adam Gilchrist [images], Glenn McGrath, Shane Warne [images] and Andrew Symonds [images], the visitors sport a rather inexperienced look, but Ponting is not worried. "We have to play the game at a certain level, and anywhere near our best is good enough to beat any side. India will be competitive but we have to give ourselves the best chance. Of course, they have no experience, but confidence and skill of our young players should be good enough," Ponting said. "Having young players is not necessarily a bad thing. They bring in lot of exuberance and energy. Playing India is a challenge and they won't get tired easily," he explained. The last time both teams squared off, sparks flew Down Under and the entire series was marred by acrimony. Ponting, however, does not foresee a recurrence and said both teams will have to play the game in the right spirit. "We will discuss these issues in the Match Referee's meeting. It's important for both captains to ensure that the players play in the right spirit," he said. India and Australia [images] have played some of the most intense series in the recent past, but former players, like Sunil Gavaskar [images], believe that playing frequently could take the charm off the rivalry. Ponting, however, does not envisage such a threat. "Any Indo-Australia series is great all the time. We play lot of cricket and we have to embrace that," he said.