Ricky Ponting, is known for his reflexes and flamboyant style of smacking short as well as fuller balls off the front foot. However, in the last few years bowlers have also developed weird type of dot-ball plans ranging from bowling with a scrambled seam, slower cutters and wobbly short balls. This art of mixing things up with seemingly innocuous balls has been further promoted by the rise of T20 Cricket where dot balls are like gold.
Most top batsmen in a team such Tendulkar, Kevin Petersien and Ponting will be the first targets of any new ploy or trick bowlers have up their sleeve. Nothing new, but in the past decade, when a bowler targets a batsman it would usually mean having some special or compelling ball which pokes at a weakness or exploits the conditions. Today, the conditions are usually more batting friendly, so bowlers' hidden plans involve some wobbly or unorthodox type of balls.
For instance, the recent successes of Ajantha Mendis and also Praveen Kumar in Australia 07-08 (ODIs) have a lot to do about a ball which just looks easy but is just a bit different. Praveen Kumar got the better of the Australian top order in the finals in Australia by just rolling his fingers in a way that the bounce was just not as expected. He got Ponting trying to pull and also others, but not with a ball which could be tough to defend. However, it must be said that Ishant Sharma's battle with Ponting in the Tests has been classical - testing the Australian on the front foot on off stump....
When Ponting came to India in 2008, he eventually scored his first century in India- in Bangalore. When Ian Chappell was asked by a TV viewer why Ponting could do it this time, he simply answered that what he did right was 'he did not get out'. However, why he did not get out was that he curbed his natural game of smacking slightly short balls off the front foot. Ponting has now altered his game to blend caution and aggression- and is back into the thick of scoring runs. A shift which Sachin Tendulkar has made, and has been successful (but somehow gets criticized).
This Champions trophy 2009, is a good indicator of Ponting's shifting gears. In South Africa, where conditions are more like home for Ponting, he started off well against West Indies' B Team. Against India he struggled- could have been caught behind off a pull, had a few mistimed drives... but he hung in to make 65 off 88 balls, well below the strike rates on that pitch. Against Pakistan, chasing 206, he eased in with a useful 34 of 68 balls- well below the asking rate and eventually the tail bailed them from the mess. But again, these are signs of blending caution in the right amount, when it is not necessary to 'just go out and play your shots'.
Yesterday, in the semi finals he showed his brilliance (sure the English team was weakened without Stuart Broad and Flintoff), but chasing 250 in a semis is never a given. He made sure he put momentum to get the score to about 80/1 and then he let Watson take risks and push the game beyond England's reach.
Ponting finally went past his poor record in tournament semi-finals (He aggregated only 151 runs in 7 innings till now).
Of course, knock-outs are not the only matches which matter... there are league phases where games are near must-win to qualify, and this fact gets extended when your team is not invincible as it used to be. (Australia were let down by batters against Pakistan, in their must win league game). Someday the media will get it right, that all games, except dead rubbers matter.
Saumil
Mumbai, India
3 Oct 2009
Posts
