Ricky Ponting Wants Team India To Use This Player As A ‘Floater’: Indian wicket-keeper batter Rishabh Pant is currently leading the Indian cricket team in the ongoing five-match T20I series against South Africa. However, Pant’s captaincy stint kicked off on a bad note as team India suffered a seven-wicket loss even after posting 211/4 on the board. On a personal note, coming out to bat at No.4, Pant scored 29 runs off just 16 deliveries.
Ricky Ponting On Where Pant Should Bat
Meanwhile, legendary batter and Pant’s Delhi Capitals coach Ricky Ponting has given his opinion about where Pant should bat and why he can be used as a floater in the team.
Well, in the recently concluded 2022 edition of the Indian Premier League, Pant mostly batted at no.4 or no.5 and throughout the season, the left-handed batter had a strike rate of over 151 and he also turned out to be the second-highest scorer for Delhi Capitals after David Warner.
Speaking on the ICC Review, Ricky Ponting backed Rishabh Pant to be used as the floater in the team. He said: “He (Pant) is a wonderful player. An outstanding young man, who has got the world at his feet. And he’ll be exceptionally dangerous for India, especially on the wickets we’ll provide in Australia…. good flat, fast, bouncy wickets. He’ll be one of the players to watch out (for) in the tournament (World T20) for sure,”
He added: “I reckon having him as a floater. I’ll probably have him listed at (number) five in the (Indian) batting line-up.”
“But in certain situations, where it gets to a stage, where there are seven-eight overs to go and they are one-two down, then I will look at sending him in and giving as much time as possibly can. He is that dynamic and that explosive (player) and that is certainly the way I would look at trying to use him,”
Ponting also shed light on his conversation with Pant about his batting struggles in IPL 2022. He said:
“He probably didn’t have his best tournament (IPL). He was really frustrated with his IPL this year because he went into the tournament batting better than I’ve ever seen him bat before.
“And even by his own admission, he said the same thing to me, halfway through the tournament that he didn’t feel he was getting results that he probably should have and that he probably deserved,”
Ponting On Dinesh Karthik
Furthermore, Ponting also talked about how the Indian team management should utilise Dinesh Karthik in the shortest format of the game, he said:
“I would have him, and I’d have him in at that five or six role. The way that he finished games for RCB this year, he took his game to another level. When you look at the IPL, you want your better players to maybe be able to win two or three, maybe four games through the season. If you can get that out of them, it’s probably going to be a really good return. But Dinesh probably had a bigger impact on a lot of the games than most of the other RCB players did this year.”
He added: “Virat (Kohli) having the year he’s had, Maxi (Glenn Maxwell) started the tournament really well… but DK was the one. And Faf too I guess, who kept the RCB bandwagon rolling. I’d be surprised if he’s not in their (India) line-up somewhere,”
