Former Australia captain Ricky Ponting feels Ben Stokes doesn’t look like the kind of “physically aggressive” presence that opposition teams feared because of his “ultra-defensive approach” in the ongoing Ashes series.
Ponting also criticized England captains Joe Root, Stokes and Jos Buttler for the manner in which they were dismissed in the first innings of the Boxing Day Test, which the two-time World Cup-winning captain believed was unforgivable. England are down 0-2 in marquee performance among traditional rivals.
“He’s looking over-defensive. He didn’t look like the big, physically aggressive presence at the crease that opposition teams were afraid to bowl to in other series. You can understand that the batting position in any game is easy. Why not and he is coming up against some good bowlers.
Ponting believes that Stokes should move away from the conservative approach to helping struggling tourists.
“But I think if you just sit back and wait, and don’t put pressure on great bowlers, they are going to get you out. We always used to say in teams that I played in that the better the bowler, the better the batsman. You have to take more risks as you just don’t get bad balls.
“You’ve got to find a way to jump over anything that’s a little bad, swing the strike as hard as you can.”
Entering the third Test, England reshuffled their top order, bringing in Zack Crawley and Jonny Bairstow in place of Ollie Pope and Rory Burns. But the Tourists were bowled out for just 185 runs after coming to bat on the first day of the Boxing Day Test.
Ponting feels that the poor performance of fellow England batsmen has put more pressure on Stokes.
“He’s probably going into the game knowing that it’s so important that he scores that number five slot that he’s putting in a little bit of effort,” Ponting said.
“The bottom line with this is that technically he could be their second best, so you can’t keep pushing him down the list when you’re batting guys with shoddy technique ahead of him. And if you look at everyone outside Joe Root, I would say that technically he is their second best player.”
Ponting criticized Stokes, Root and Buttler and said senior players need to rise to the occasion.
“(It) was unforgivable for your three more senior players, the players they needed to stand behind, which we believe were some very harsh discussions after the Adelaide game. If your leaders aren’t going to do that, you can’t expect young people to work.
“Young players are going to learn from senior players and when senior players are setting such examples, you can understand why some youngsters are also making mistakes,” he said.
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