Ricky Ponting
The second day of the 4th test match in the Ashes series was full of drama. Australia started off with a reasonably good morning getting Andrew Strauss out on 69, he managed to make only 5 more runs from his day 1 score, similarly Alastair Cook made only 2 runs more than his total on day 2 which was 82.
Unfortunately for Australia, Jonathan Trott arrived to wipe the smiles off their faces. He played sensible and classy cricket making 141 not out in 278 balls scoring most of his runs on the leg side and quite honestly played fetch with the Aussies making them run around chasing the ball.
He was almost run out at one point but ran for his life and managed to make it through without any injury.
Trott and Kevin Pietersen made a well rounded partnership of 92 runs, Pietersen having made 51runs from 89 balls. Paul Collingwood and Ian Bell couldn’t do much for the side making 8 and 1 respectively.
Along comes Matt Prior, showing Melbourne he can do more than just taking catches, he remains not out at the end of day 2 making 75 runs from 105 balls, luckily for Trott, Prior managed to support him on the other side helping form another extremely dangerous partnership.
The Aussie bowling side somehow looks more solid than the batting line up, that’s saying something. Peter Siddle got the early break through with the openers Strauss and Cook as well as Kevin Pietersen, taking 3 wickets of the England side. Mitchell Johnson took 2 wickets that of Collingwood and Bell.
It seems like if Australia was requesting the weather gods for some rain to wash way their sins it didn’t work out so well, the rainfall is expected in Brisbane not in Melbourne much to their dismay.
Ricky Ponting however, finally cracked today. His chewing gum was not enough to keep his mouth shut at day 2 of the Ashes. Ponting argued relentlessly with Aleem Dar regarding the not out decision given to Kevin Pietersen when he was 1run away from his half century. Ponting felt it was caught behind, on asking the Third Umpire, the decision came in favour of Pietersen which caused Ponting to further mouth off Aleem Dar once again as well as the other umpire Tony Hill and of course Kevin Pietersen himself. Seems like none of the sledging worked on the England players that now Ponting has started heckling the umpires instead.
He should be taken to task for this ridiculous behaviour, once the decision is made by the umpire no batsman is allowed to question it, India of all countries faced major difficulties in one of their tours of Australia when almost 4 decisions which turned out to be wrong went in favour of Australia., wrong decisions are a part of cricket, if Ponting doesn’t comprehend that fact then that is only because they usually go according to his liking. Hurts doesn’t it?
This dramatic explosion from Ponting only shows that the team is low on confidence, which is only good news for England, Hopefully they’ll be the ones having the last laugh.
All in all, a good day in the office for England.
Tags: Ashes Series, Ashes Test, Australia, Cricket, England, Jonathan Trott, Melbourne, Ricky Ponting
