I don’t think we were defensive: Ponting

Ricky Ponting defends Australia’s scoring rate of 2.84, says the wicket was difficult to score runs on

BANGALORE: Matthew Hayden was touted as the big scalp, the man who traditionally troubles the Indians at home. So, after he fell to Zaheer Khan in the first over of the Bangalore Test, Anil Kumble would have felt less worried about losing an important toss. After all, next man in Ricky Ponting did not have a great record in India — and his nemesis from the last series, Ishant Sharma, had the ball.

At the end of the day, however, Ponting had braved the conditions, quality pace bowling and his own demons, and turned the tables on India with 123 off 243 balls.

Ponting admitted that it felt nice to have finally score runs in India. “It is very difficult to
differentiate between the centuries I have scored against India. My highest scores have come against India, 257 and 242 and those innings are probably as good as I have ever played. Today’s innings… not so much for the way I played but it has been a very satisfying innings,” he said.

While the day belonged to the captain, he was also happy with the way it had gone for his team. “We managed to consolidate well after a wicket had fallen on the 3rd ball. At the end of the day, we lost two wickets, which is a bit disappointing,” he said.

When asked why the Australians had been unusually defensive, only scoring 254 runs in the day, Ponting said: “I don’t think we were defensive. The Indians had a lot of fielders out on the fence pretty early in the day, so the boundary scoring options were taken away. Also, it was a difficult wicket to score on — there is not much bounce in it and
not much pace either.”