da jogodeouro： Ricky Ponting said his pace attack had adapted well to their altered roles and the result was not their fault
da bet esporte： Brydon Coverdale at the MCG10-Feb-2008
Ricky Ponting: “There was some pretty poor batting today, 159 on that wicket was justnever enough.” © Getty Images
Two days after praising the variety in his bowling arsenal Ricky Pontingagain applauded his attack, which this time featured four frontline fastmen and no specialist spinner in a five-wicket loss to India. James Hopeswas a late withdrawal with hamstring tightness and it left Australia in atricky situation, deciding whether to replace the allrounder with a bowleror a batsman.They chose to bring in Stuart Clark for his first game of the series andalso replaced Brad Hogg with Brad Haddin in an effort to restore somebalance and add depth to the batting. That part of the gamble didn’t work- Haddin made 5 in Australia’s 159 – but Ponting said his pace attack hadadapted well to their altered roles and the result was not their fault.”There was some pretty poor batting today, 159 on that wicket was justnever enough,” Ponting said. “But the way we stuck at our task with theball and particularly in the field I thought we gave ourselves half achance of winning the game.”When Yuvraj Singh departed at 5 for 102, mistiming a Clarkslower ball, Ponting felt Australia needed to pounce and he went for brokeby reintroducing his strike bowlers Brett Lee and Mitchell Johnson. “Wejust had to get a breakthrough then,” he said. “I don’t know how manytimes we went past the outside edge and there were a couple of nicks thatwent in the gap or fell just short.”Lee was fast and furious and his 1 for 42 did not reflect the threat heposed on a bouncy pitch, while Johnson’s ten overs brought 2 for 24 andClark collected 1 for 26 from ten. However, Ponting was left without atop-class slow option and waited until the 34th over to use MichaelClarke.”As it turned out today the part-timers didn’t matter because the gamewasn’t going to go that far,” he said. “But having an allrounder out ofyour side does change the balance.”Clark is third on the ICC’s Test bowling rankings but finds himselfconstantly on the fringe of the world-champion ODI side. Ponting praisedthe pressure that Clark applied, although he still referred to him as “aback-up bowler”. He might be used again if Australia rest their top fastmen later in the series but Ponting said they were handling the workloadwell at the moment.”Mitchell and Brett are both ultra-fit guys,” he said. “Brett bowledprobably one of his quickest spells of the summer tonight. He’s holding upreally well.”We’ll have a look at an opportunity somewhere to give both those guys agame off where we can. But at the moment they’re going well. We’re goingto Perth now, we’re going to need our best bowling attack over there.”The Melbourne result leaves India and Australia each with a win, while SriLanka will search for their first victory in Canberra against India onTuesday. Ponting said Australia would need to stay on top of their game toensure they reach the finals of what will be the last tri-series inAustralia in its current format.”The last few years in Australia there’s been a bit of concern of theseries not being very close,” he said. “But right now we’ve got a reallytight tussle on our hands. All three teams have obviously a very goodchance of playing off in the finals.”
