Ricky Ponting and Michael Hussey’s absence hurting Australia badly, says Dean Jones

Ricky Ponting and Michael Hussey’s absence hurting Australia badly, says Dean Jones

Former cricketer, Dean Jones has lashed out at his national side for an awful performance in the ongoing Test series against India. The Aussies are currently 2-0 down in the four-match series, and Jones believes the absence of Ricky Ponting and Michael Hussey
is hurting the Kangaroos to a great deal.

Both veterans recently took retirement from the international stage. And with a relatively inexperienced side, Michael Clarke is facing a lot of trouble. So far in the series, only two visiting batsmen have scored runs above an average of 30.

On the other hand, the Indian side has two double-century makers in the crew. The tourists have completely failed to show any resistant in front of Indian spinners. Even though the wickets are tough, the Aussies were expected to show some fight.

"The absence of Ricky Ponting and Michael Hussey is very evident in the middle order. Michael Clarke looked listless on where to bat himself. He may have decided to now go up the order to number four. Hussey is a great player and sadly we don’t have great
Test batsmen like him anymore to help Clarke in the batting department," the 51-year-old Jones said.

He added, "They have got some average Test players in their ranks who need more time to prepare. Someone like Sunil Gavaskar, who has experience of more than 100 Tests, can get acclimatized to foreign conditions in much lesser time than these players."

"But when you have players of inexperience of playing on pitches that turn like this, they should be given more time to cope with the conditions and learn. We are not backing away from anything as Indians have been way too good on the field here. We smashed
India at home Down Under and now we’re getting it back."

The Australian side has now suffered five consecutive defeats on the Indian soil. They have no chance of winning the series, but Clarke is hoping for something better in the next two games. The skipper has already hinted his own promotion in the batting
order. The third Test is scheduled to be played at Mohali, starting from March 14^th.

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Posted by Rana Nasir Ghafoor on Mar 6 2013. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry