Ricky Ponting
News flash! Ricky Ponting captain of the Australian cricket team was unhappy with the Chinnaswamy Stadium pitch in Bangalore, SHOCKING… well, not really. Actually speaking, if he had been happy with the pitch that might have been shocking.
Previously Graeme Smith had commented saying he was disappointed with the Chennai pitch and now Ricky Ponting makes his entrance whining about the Chinnaswamy wicket.
Ponting was also already involved in a tiff between the over dramatic Sreesanth in the 1st warm up match, Sreesanth apparently, in the heat of the moment made an “L” sign on his forehead with his fingers calling Ponting a loser. Pontings comment after was “There’s very few games go by that Sreesanth doesn’t have something to say to a few of us. That’s just the way it goes,”
One usually doesn’t like siding with Ricky Ponting, but Sreesanth really needs to grow up now, there’s a difference between sledging and being stupid and he seems to have crossed over to the stupid side. Sreesanth has been given an opportunity of a life time and doing these brainless antics he ends up making a spectacle of himself.
His reaction came after the warm up match between India and Australia which Australia lost by 38runs. He felt that the pitch was “un-prepared” Ponting said “This one looked a bit under-prepared. Both teams lost constant wickets and it spun a lot in the second innings. May be they wanted to keep it nice and grassy for the tournament. Hopefully as the tournament goes on, we will get better wickets than this one. We know that as the tournament goes on, we could get wickets like this we have to find a way to win in tough conditions.”
The Australian side also lost their second warm up match against South Africa by 7 wickets.
Even captain of the Indian cricket team M.S Dhoni said that he wishes they don’t get such turning wickets for when the tournament actually begins.
It is due to these kinds of conditions that M.S Dhoni feels the toss is of upmost importance to the outcome of the match. He said “I hope we will not get same wickets in the coming games. It is not possible to win every toss and it is difficult to chase anything over 230 on such wickets. If it is turning less then even if we lose the toss, we get a fair opportunity.”
Dhoni also said that Australia didn’t give their 100% in the warm up match as it was not of importance and it was with the idea to test the opponent, the pitch and avoid unnecessary injuries.
Dhoni however has more things to worry about at the moment besides tosses and pitches; Zaheer Khan the leading pace attack is suffering from a minor groin injury, so he will have to miss the second warm up match that will take place in Chennai against New Zealand. Sachin Tendulkar missed the first warm up match against Australia but will definitely play the second as per MS Dhoni.
As for Ricky Ponting, he should be aware that he is no longer in Australia and the conditions are not going to be made so that they are favourable to him and his team and that if the ICC has inspected everything, it should be enough.
Tags: Australian Cricket Team, Bangalore, Captain, Chinnaswamy Stadium, Cricket, ICC, Pitch, Ricky Ponting, World Cup
