Melbourne
\nFormer Australia skipper Ricky Ponting found India\u2019s slow batting baffling in the third Test and feels that Cheteshwar Pujara\u2019s 106 off 319 balls may end up being the reason for their defeat.<\/p>\n
India scored at less than two-and-a-half runs an over for most of the first two days of the Test, registering the slowest first-innings score of more than 300 in Australia for three decades.<\/p>\n
Pujara consumed 319 deliveries for his 106-run knock as none of India\u2019s top five batsmen scored at a strike rate of more than 50. Even captain Virat Kohli, who paces his innings decently, scored his 82 off 204 balls with a strike rate of 40.19 on a slow track.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut he just locks himself in this little bubble where scoring doesn\u2019t seem to faze him at all. They have got other guys in their side who are stroke-makers but if those guys don\u2019t come off, the scoring rate is always going to be hovering around that two runs an over mark, which makes it pretty hard to win Test matches, especially on flat wickets like we might have here.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEven it just seems like they haven\u2019t got a lot of direction about what they\u2019re trying to achieve. It looks like they want to bat long enough to only bat once, but just yet they haven\u2019t got enough runs to do that.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously they\u2019ve talked long and hard about what they want to do, it\u2019s just a bit baffling to us.\u201d \u201cThe ball before he got out, he played a really good pull shot over mid-on, so he looked like he was moving free enough at that stage. I just think it was the intent that was shown. I\u2019d love to see them start more that way against Kohli.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe doesn\u2019t play too many cross-bat shots early on , so I think that\u2019s maybe something the Australians could look at and target for the rest of the series.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Melbourne Former Australia skipper Ricky Ponting found India\u2019s slow batting baffling in the third Test and feels that Cheteshwar Pujara\u2019s 106 off 319 balls may end up being the reason for their defeat. India scored at less than two-and-a-half runs an over for most of the first two days of the Test, registering the slowest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51220,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51219"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51221,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51219\/revisions\/51221"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}