Former Australia skipper Ricky Ponting pointed out an interesting observation regarding the Bazball batting approach by the England Test team.
The ongoing Ashes 2023 series has certainly been the biggest challenge for the Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum unit with them trailing 2-1 heading into the 5th Test. A theme of this series so far, including Day 1 of the 5th Test at The Oval, has been some of the batting collapses by England, which also cost them the first couple of Tests to some extent.
England suffered another batting collapse on Day 1 at The Oval as the hosts went from 62/0 to 73/3 in the first session and then from 184/3 to 212/7. Going into Tea break, England were 250/7 in 50 overs.
Ricky Ponting said that with this Bazball approach, one might even expect England to suffer collapses.
“250/7 and there were 40 overs to go in the day. 5 runs an over again. That’s what we are starting to expect, isn’t it? They’ve been slow today compared to last week [in Manchester] (chuckles),” Ponting said speaking to Sky Sports at Tea.
“Yes it’s been refreshing bit. We talked about the collapses. I think we can expect that with the way England are playing. We can expect that with a little bit of movement [for bowlers], the lights being on, couple of good balls here and there – and there’s their free-flowing style, I think we need to get used to those collapses happening”
Ricky Ponting sees silver lining for England amid their collapses
However, Ricky Ponting explained, with the brisk rate that England bat, even considering the collapses and regular loss of wickets, they do get to a good total. Even as the wickets fell, the English batters continued to attack and hit boundaries, keeping the scoreboard ticking swiftly.
“But, the thing that happens is, when you are scoring freely, those collapses don’t make that much of a dent on the scoreboard as they normally would. I mean if you have a collapse of 3/11 and 4/28 and you are not scoring, then you are 7/100.
“But, they keep the game going forward, and we are just over half way through the day’s play and 250 runs are scored. It’s got to a point that with the conditions the way they are, Australia won’t be that keen to get out there and bat tonight. If they do bowl them out, it’s going to be challenging batting conditions for Australia,” Ponting concluded.
