Despite Lord’s loss, Ponting confident of retaining Ashes
By chennaivision at 21 July, 2009, 3:34 pm
London, Despite being one down after their Lord’s Test defeat in the ongoing Ashes, Australian skipper Ricky Ponting is not too worried and believes that his side will claw its way back into the series.
England yesterday rode on all-rounder Andrew Flintoff’s brilliant bowling (5/92) in the second innings to register a 115-run win against Australia in the second Test and lead the Ashes series 1-0.
With this win, the hosts also broke Australia’s proud record of not losing a Test at Lord’s since 1934.
”I don’t know if it’s that big a challenge,” Ponting said.
”Being 1-0 down is not the ideal situation to be in but there are three games to go so there is still plenty of cricket to be played in the summer,” he added.
The right-hander also lamented the loss, admitting that the hosts dominated the match thoroughly and they deserved the win.
He, however, hailed his men’s effort and especially the bowlers till the end of the game.
”It’s disappointing anytime you don’t win a Test and we’ve been utplayed for the majority of this game, there’s no doubt about that, from the first morning until late on day three.
”The way we fought the game out from the last half of day three through to the end of the match was a reasonably pleasing sign,” Ponting said.
”I think we’ve bowled as well as we’ve bowled in the entire series in the middle of that second innings.
”To score 400 in the last innings of the game was pleasing as well. We showed a lot of fight and a lot of courage to be able to play that way, but at the end of the day it’s a 115 run loss in a Test match so that’s disappointing,” the skipper, who has made 11110 runs from 132 Tests besides 11523 runs in his 315 ODIs, was quoted as saying by the ‘Courier Mail’.
Reflecting on both the team’s performance till now in the series, Ponting believes it will still be a close series.
”I said that right from the start I didn’t think there would be a lot between both sides right the way through this series,” he stated.
”If you look at both teams on paper I think both teams are very evenly matched. It’s grabbing the momentum when you can and running with it for as long as you can that’s going to decide this series.
”If you look at this game, they grabbed the momentum on day one, ran with it on day one and most of day two, and we found it hard to wrest that back.
”A lot of Test matches are won with what happens in the first hour’s play. There’s no doubting that fact, and we were a fair bit off at the start of this game. We have to make sure we’re a whole lot better when we start the third one,” Ponting added.
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