Former Australian World Cup-winning skipper Ricky Ponting has issued a warning for the batters in the ongoing edition of the T20 World Cup. Ponting has requested batters lower their expectations after the initial matches of the World Cup. The batters have struggled to get going in this edition of the World Cup as the players and teams have raised their voices against the playing conditions.
Most of the batters light up the recently concluded IPL with high scores in almost every match; however, in the World Cup, there has been a completely different challenge for the batters, and lots of big teams have struggled to cross the 160-run mark.
However, former Australian skipper Ricky Ponting asked the batters to be technically more sound and increase their level of play to succeed in the World Cup.
“Being a day game, the ball swung and seemed a little bit,” Ponting told ESPNCricinfo. “So batsmen will have to keep that in mind, how they start their innings, and maybe just lower expectations on scores. 240 was sort of a score that you were aiming to get in the IPL. It’s probably not going to be that for the first part of the tournament here in New York. So that sets a whole lot of different challenges.”
In the IPL, the highest score was made every now and then, as on 8 occasions there have been 250+ scores, with Sunrisers Hyderabad breaking their own record a couple of times and setting up the highest score of 287 in the IPL. Ponting believes that the run feast in the IPL has spoiled the fans, who now want to witness high scores being made in every match.
Ricky Ponting said, “There’s no hiding the fact that in the first game [between SL and SA], it was probably just a little bit swayed in the bowler’s favor,” Ponting added. “But the other thing we have to be a little bit mindful of is that we have probably all been a little bit spoiled watching the runfests in the IPL over the last couple of months, where we had probably the extreme opposite.”.
