A bold decision by Ponting

Well there are at present two test series' going on in parallel namely, the tour of England over Bangladesh and the other one being the Australian tour of New Zealand. However, if both the tournaments are considered, it looks that the Bangladesh have shown better performance against England compared to New Zealand's performance against Australia. This was evident from the fact that there, the England captain didn't turn up to impose a follow on over Bangladesh while here, Ponting took no further thinking in imposing the same against New Zealand. This itself shows the caliber of the New Zealand team.

In just one full day, New Zealand lost as many as 11 wickets which is as good as getting all out and losing a wicket extra. The entire day belonged to New Zealand which saw them bat without any Aussie taking the crease. The New Zealand team had ended the previous day that is day 2 with 108 runs on the board and losing 4 wickets which included an unbeaten 5^th wicket partnership of 65 runs between Vettori and McCullum which could last for just 4 more runs on day 3 of the test match. It would not be longer for the Kiwis to lose the remaining 9 wickets in a similar fashion.

New Zealand were playing at home and no excuses regarding their debacle can be entertained. The first innings of New Zealand lasted for just 49 runs with 6 losses of wickets inbetween. After the loss of the 4^th wicket on the 2^nd day's play, New Zealand were expected to put up a fighting performance atleast if not a match winning one. But, all that happened was the continuation of the bad work that was seen by the New Zealand batsmen in the initial part of the first innings. And if that was not enough, they lost yet another wicket in the second innings of their batting when Watling lost out to a controversial decision.

Whatever, the highlight of the day's play was the Australian captain Ricky Ponting imposing a follow on upon the New Zealand team. Ponting was never found doing such a thing in the past despite there being a huge margin. I remember Ponting deciding to continue batting in the first test against England in the Ashes 2007 with a lead of 445 runs. And then, in the recently concluded test series against Pakistan, Ponting decided not to go in for a follow on despite the fact that Pakistan failed to cash out an opportunity to win a test at Sydney. These were the cases where Australia were hosting unlike in the current test against New Zealand. This shows some maturity of Ponting as a captain.