Australia wants more from Ponting

Well after Australia's loss to New Zealand at Napier a couple of days back, tongues have to wag for the losing team. This happens to be either some lame excuses which form the reason for losing or the strength that the opposition is aided with that inversely hit them. However, Ricky Ponting comes out asking more from the Aussie batsmen when scoreboard suggests that the Aussie batsmen have done enough to see their team through the match which unfortunately didn't happen at Napier. It was just a matter of time that Australia get back to their winning ways which can be proved in the next 4 ODIs that follow.

This was more or less Dhoni's words when he comes out blaming the batsmen for India's loss in the finals of the tri nation tournament featuring Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and India a couple of months back. However, though the batsmen should have put up atleast a score of 300 on the board, Ponting's words are not completely justified whatsoever. Every Australian batsman put up a score in excess of 10 runs which is not guaranteed in case of a touring team that loses. Australia had a depth in batting upto number 9 until Mitchell Johnson who can prove something with the bat.

Ricky Ponting justifies his words citing the team total which was at one stage 50/1 at the end of the 6^th over with the run rate above 8.0 an over, without realizing the advantage of the powerplay that the batsmen were enjoying. Even a run rate of over 10 an over at that stage should not raise eye brows. And, how can one extrapolate the final match score with just 6 overs been bowled? If this is the way calculation can go on, a match should yield a total in excess of a thousand incase the 1^st over goes for 20 runs and the same is expected to happen for the remaining 49 overs.

Meanwhile, Ponting should take a look at his own captaincy when the way he used his bowlers is given a close look at. Despite going in for over 6 an over, Bollinger is given to bowl his entire quota of 10 overs. One has to wonder as to what on earth made Ponting go in for full pace attack leaving little room for the spinners to cash in. Ponting had spinners like Michael Clarke and Nathan Hauritz who bowled just 5 overs. Despite decades of experience, Ponting was found forgetting the fact that the batsmen from New Zealand are bad players of spin bowling. The Aussie bowling was found to oscillate between medium pace and fast bowling.

Whatever, despite all these mishaps from Ponting, he must consider himself lucky enough for coming close to winning and not losing in a one sided manner.