Time ... Malcolm Conn says Ricky Ponting must make Perth his final Test. Source: Greg Wood / AFP
What a tragedy it has come to this.
Hello, you either have JavaScript turned off or an old version of Adobe's Flash Player.
Ricky Ponting, rated by Allan Border as Australia's greatest batsman after Bradman, should jump before he is pushed.
A retirement announcement and a fitting farewell during the last Test against South Africa in Perth would help to recapture some of the dignity lost in Adelaide.
The rehabilitation of Phil Hughes continues apace. His 158 against Victoria in Melbourne on Sunday made the left-hander the leading Sheffield Shield run scorer this season with 510 runs at 57.
He turns 24 on Friday and already has 20 first class centuries.
If there is ever a time to give Hughes another chance it is against Sri Lanka in the three-Test series starting in December, although the first Test in Hobart could be a torrid affair given Western Australia were bowled out for 67 there on Sunday.
Australia must try and put together a settled side for the Ashes in England next year, and clearly it is unrealistic to believe Ponting will make the trip, however much he wants to.
It is not just that Ponting has made 0, 4 and 16 in this series while Michael Clarke and Mike Hussey have filled their boots, or the fact that Ponting turns 38 inside a month.
Hello, you either have JavaScript turned off or an old version of Adobe's Flash Player.
Hussey will turn 38 in May before next year's Ashes tour. His age is not an issue after 257 runs in this series at 86, with two centuries and a second innings top score of 54 on a wearing wicket on Sunday.
Ponting has 20 runs at an average of under seven and does not look like playing an innings of substance.
Tellingly, this is just the second time in a 167-Test career extending almost two decades that Ponting has been bowled twice in the one match.
The first would be a dim and distant memory when the India spinners got him on a dodgy Feroz Shah Kotla pitch in Delhi back in 1996 during just his fourth Test.
Hello, you either have JavaScript turned off or an old version of Adobe's Flash Player.
This Test will be seared in his mind. First there was the full outswinger from Jacques Kallis which forced Ponting to overbalance and land on all fours as the ball clattered into his off-stump.
Then there was the tentative chop on to a regulation delivery outside his off-stump on Saturday, one of the worst shots, or non-shots, he has played during a long and illustrious career as Australia's most prolific batsman.
This is not a sudden tumble from the brief 60 career-average Ponting achieved with a century against England during the 2006-07 whitewash. It has been years in the making.
Ponting went two-and-a-half years scoring only one century and averaging just 33 before his amazing series last summer, when he played a central role in beating India 4-0 with a hundred and a double hundred.
A more detailed look shows his 108-run series average was a deluge amidst the drought.
During the past two years, Ponting's series averages have been 16 against England, 31 in Sri Lanka, 17 in South Africa, 33 against New Zealand, 108 against India, 24 in the West Indies and under seven in this series.
It's time.
Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang
'Time for Ponting to call it quits'
Dengan url
http://sportlanhealty.blogspot.com/2012/11/time-for-ponting-to-call-it-quits.html
Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya
'Time for Ponting to call it quits'
namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link
'Time for Ponting to call it quits'
sebagai sumbernya
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar