Australia vs India 2018: Aaron Finch Has a Lot of Work to do - Ricky Ponting
Updated - 07 Dec 2018, 06:55 PM
Former Australia skipper Ricky Ponting has raised doubts on incumbent Test opener Aaron Finch as a long-term option adding that the current scarcity of batting talent in the country is unacceptable.
Meanwhile, the opener made a solid debut in Test cricket as an opener against Pakistan earlier this year. As a result, the selectors retained him in the spot despite most of his first-class runs coming in the middle-order. However, his first innings in Australia didn’t extend long as Ishant Sharma rattled his timber in the third ball he faced.
In October, Ricky Ponting said the decision to open with Finch in the UAE but said today that the Australians had somewhat backed themselves into a corner.
“I think this problem has been created by picking him to open in the UAE,” Ponting told cricket.com.au. “It’s the easiest place in the world to be an opening batsman over there, as we know. And he did reasonably well over there which meant. What was the long-term objective to open the batting with him over there?
“The shot we saw today is not what a good Test match opener should do third ball of the innings. The new ball on that wicket was always going to be the hardest time to bat and he went for a hard cover drive. Sometimes that can happen, but he’s got a lot of work to do, I think,” he added.
Ponting also dismissed the suggestion that picking four left-handers in the top six played into the hands of Indian spinner Ravichandran Ashwin, who continued his dominant record against southpaws by removing Marcus Harris, Shaun Marsh, and Usman Khawaja on day two.
“I don’t think it matters if we’ve got left-handers or right-handers there,” Ponting said. “We had to pick our best players and most of them were lefties,” he signed off.
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Aaron Finch Ricky Ponting
