‘I think they’ll pick Konstas and I think they should pick Konstas’ : Ponting on Sam Konstas’s chances in Sri Lanka tour | Cricket News

While 19-year-old opener Sam Konstas has only played in two Test matches for Australia in the recently held Border-Gavaskar Trophy and hit a half-century in his maiden Test innings, there have been talks about Travis Head being the opener with Usman Khawaja. Head donned the opener’s role during Australia’s tour to India in 2023 but former Australian captain Ricky Ponting believes that the selectors should invest in Konstas as an opener. With Australia facing Sri Lanka in a two-Test series starting next week, Ponting has urged the selectors to pick Konstas in the final XI.
“I think they’ll pick Konstas and I think they should pick Konstas. He’s the one they’ve identified, he’s hit the ground running here in his first innings as well. He provided a lot of entertainment and a lot of buzz around that whole series. I think they need to play him, to be honest. It’s a hard place to play and a hard place to win. It’ll be hard place to bat for all of our guys, but especially some of the younger guys who haven’t experienced those conditions much in the past. But I think they should pick him, it’ll be a great learning experience for him,” Ponting was quoted Sydney Morning Herald.
Konstas, who created hory with a breezy half-century during his maiden Test innings during the Boxing Day Test at Melbourne in December last year, could not impress further in his next three Test innings with scores of 8, 23 and 22 in those innings. Konstas had scored 18 runs off a Jasprit Bumrah over in the Melbourne Test and will be touring the Indian sub-continent for the first time in his international career. “Getting out of Australia and away from some of that buzz and hype that’s surrounded him for the summer will probably do him some good as well, and he gets to learn a bit of what the travelling life of an international cricketer is all about and how hard it can be to play in different parts of the world. I’d be picking him if I was a selector,” said Ponting.
While Head has opened in the Test matches in recent years, Ponting shared that the move to go with Konstas as an opener will help in long term. Konstas has played in 13 first class matches and has scored 831 runs with two hundreds and four fifties.
Asked about the option of moving Head up the top, Ponting said that the move needed to be considered against the wider value the series would offer to Konstas as a player learning his craft as an opener around the world. The former captain also compared Konstas’s early days with his early days in Test cricket. “Sam seems like a different character than what I was coming into an Australian team. He’s got a bit more about him, been on the front foot a little bit more than I was. My first tour to the West Indies in 1995 I knew I wasn’t going to be playing. I was one of the spare batsmen. When you’re coming into a tour like that, it’s very much to sit back and wait your turn and don’t expect too much from training, don’t expect too much from the guys. [It’s] a bit different with Sam now, he’s the incumbent Test match opener, and he should be going away there just to get as much advice and ask as many questions as he can of the more senior players,” said Ponting.