Allan Border wants Ricky Ponting to keep playing Test cricket

Allan Border wants Ricky Ponting to keep playing Test cricket

Former Australian captain, Allan Border has endorsed Ricky Ponting’s decision to keep playing Test cricket despite being axed from the national limited-over squad. Due to his poor performance in the opening matches of the ongoing triangular series, the selectors
dumped former skipper from the ODI side.

Many cricket pundits opined that the 37-year-old should have retired from international cricket after being hurled out of the crew. However, Ponting did not lose hope, saying that he would continue playing longest version of the game.

Border put his weight behind Ponting and said that his presence in the squad will help youngsters settle down at the highest level of the game.

"Ricky Ponting at his absolute best is a walk-up start. Ricky Ponting a little bit below his best is still heaps better than a lot of the young guys that we’ve got going around. He’s got that passion for the game and the passion for the effort that goes
in behind the scenes that people don’t see. And while he thinks he can do it all, why not keep going?" Border said.

"I’m always reluctant to push these guys into retirement when they’re not quite ready because we haven’t got those four or five young players pushing these guys," he added.

The veteran batsman served Australia in 375 one-dayers, piling up 13704 runs including 30 brilliant hundreds. He is also Australia’s highest run-getter in both versions of the sport.

Border argued that nobody can point finger at Ponting’s skills and status as an international cricket. He also shared that since the Tasmanian batsman still has passion and love for the game, he should be allowed to continue his journey and serve Australia
for another year or two.

"I do agree in 99 out of 100 times that you’ve got to make that clinical hard call, albeit in difficult scenarios. But there’s also room to have some compassion as well. I think in all sports, there’s certain people who have built up a certain amount of
‘compassion points’ and I think that comes into it. It’s got to have some room in there,” described the former skipper.

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Posted by Rana Nasir Ghafoor on Feb 22 2012. Filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry