‘He just seemed to be this little pest running around….’: Ricky Ponting on young opener Sam Konstas’ tactics in Border-Gavaskar Trophy | Cricket News
While Australian opener 19-year-old Sam Konstas has hogged limelight on his two-Test match young career including a half-century in his maiden Test innings in the recently concluded Border-Gavaskar Trophy between India and Australia, former Australian captain Rickey Ponting is of the view that the young star cannot survive Test cricket for long with his tactics.
Konstas, who had become the youngest Australian opener to hit a half-century in the Melbourne Test, scored a total of 113 runs in four innings in two Test matches. The highlight of the series for Konstas was him hitting Indian pacer Jasprit Bumrah for 18 runs in an over during his fifty in Melbourne but Ponting believes that ‘He could not make sense of Konstas’s tactics’.
“I actually don’t know what to make of it so far, to be honest. He just seemed to be this little pest running around trying to upset the Indians everywhere that he goes. There’s no doubt the way that he started in Melbourne, that definitely flustered India. They weren’t ready for that. In fact, I don’t think Sam’s teammates were ready for what he did that morning on day one. Because he doesn’t play that way in Sheffield Shield cricket. He doesn’t need to. But when you’re taking a step up against the best bowlers in the world and you’re under pressure with your defensive game, you’ve got to try and find a way to score,” Ponting said while speaking on the ICC Review Podcast.
The Australian youngster played a lot of unconventional shots like the ramp shot and scoop shot during his debut at Melbourne. Post the first innings in Melbourne, Konstas could only play knocks of 8, 22 and 26 in the series and Ponting sees the youngster as one not trusting his defence.
“So what it looked like for me with Sam was when he started playing the ramps and the scoops, that was because he just wasn’t trusting his defence enough. We saw that he’s got some shots, but a lot of the shots that we saw were reckless. I don’t think you can survive as a Test opening batsman playing like that all the time.” Ponting further said.
During the opening day of the Sydney Test, Konstas had an altercation with Indian pacer Jasprit Bumrah. The incident happened on the penultimate delivery of the opening day with Khawaja taking some time to get ready at the striker’s end with Bumrah getting durbed over the delay. Konstas, who was at the non-striker end, seemed to have uttered a few words to the Indian skipper. Bumrah then picked up the wicket of Khawaja off the next delivery with Bumrah charging towards Konstas following the dismissal and Virat Kohli too joining the duo with some words exchanged.
Ponting also found Konstas role in the incident as unnecessary. “That wasn’t Sam’s battle. The battle was between Bumrah and Khawaja. Batsmen will always try and take time out of the game to try and slow it down. Bowlers will always rush through. But the way that I was taught to play the game is when the bowler is ready, the batsmen should be ready to face up. When Sam decided to get involved, then Usman had to leave his crease and come down and try and settle things down. And I actually think that made Usman lose his concentration. If you look at the way that he played that last ball, he went back to one that was pretty much a half volley. So I don’t think he was switched on at the moment either. So I think there was a huge learning curve there for Sam. Stay out of it. It’s not your fight,” said Ponting.
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