Ponting under heavy pressure as a captain as well as a batsman!

After the first and second day of first test at Bangalore, nothing seems to be going in favour of australian captain Ricky Ponting. He is under a lot of pressure for his batting and for his captaincy also. Ricky Ponting never made good scores here in India. But on the first test, when he scored the first century for Australia, it was imagined that he has gone through the patches of his career and now able to score freely of the Indian attack. But to his dismay, all went wrong horribly in the seconf innings itself. Only Watson could stand against the formidable Indian attack in the second innings of the first test. India almost sneaked the first test under the nose of the Australians.

But it became certain in the second test on the first day itself. Both Sourav and Sachin playing splendid innings made him look like a dumb head with the burden of captaincy. He never got the courage of attacking any Indian pair. He gave them time to settle down and then expecting them to throw their wickets away. He put men on the boundary even with the new ball. That was the worst part of his captaincy till now. Apart from his spinner, all the remaining bowlers are very good fast bowlers. But instead of attacking the Indians with full flow, he tried to defend and that has cost him the second test match.

His batting looked extreamly helpless against the attack of Ishant Sharma. Apart from the first innings, Ishant claimed him three times cheaply. That’s been one of the biggest problems of Australians of late in this series. The other problem this captain is having is the failure of Hayden and fast bowler Brett Lee. Haden has been constantly struggling against the moving ball of Zaheer Khan and the outburst was shown in the second innings of the Mohali test. His anger made him fall in the second innings. Indians seems to have a plan going against Lee. They never try to hit him until the ball is there to hit. And they are very keen to use his pace rather than forcing a big drive.

Now Ponting as a captain is under lot of pressure as his team fears to lose the Border-Gavaskar trophy. As a batsman his problems are heavy against the tall fast bowler Ishant. He has to solve these problems as soon as possible before this series gets over.