Ricky Ponting deserves appreciation for predicting it correctly.
Australian great Ricky Ponting brilliantly predicted the ball that could trouble the RCB batter Jacob Bethell while commentating during Day 2 of the Oval Test. His fellow commentator asked him what the danger ball was to Bethell, and Ponting was quick to highlight that the inswinging delivery from a fuller length can be problematic for the southpaw.
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Match abandoned due to rain
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“He looks to me like he’s setting him up for the one that is going to come back in. Everything so far, he’s taken away from the outside edge, creating an angle in and just getting in to swing or nip away from the leftie. The danger ball might be one that’s slightly fuller and swinging back.”
Ponting rightly spotted that Akash Deep was going through an obvious setup in the 37th over of the innings, for the bowler took three consecutive balls away from Bethell while delivering from round the wicket. Then came the inswinging delivery, as Ponting predicted, on the fifth delivery, and the batter was in trouble immediately.
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Akash bowled a slightly fuller-length delivery than the previous three, sliding it onto his pads, and Bethell was late to pick it up and uncomfortably glanced it to the left of the short midwicket. His head fell over, but since the delivery wasn’t very full to hit the pads, the batter somehow survived LBW and catch.
Akash Deep did most things correctly to induce enough doubts in Bethell’s mind in the previous over, but Mohammed Siraj was the one who got his lengths right and removed the batter. He first angled the initial two balls away from the batter with a wobble seam from over the wicket, one of which went for a boundary.
However, Siraj quickly went very full, attempting an inswinging yorker on the third delivery and trapping Bethell in front of the wickets. The ball swung at the last minute, and Bethell, whose bat was trapped beside his boot, couldn’t counter the movement, and his head fell over again.
Siraj was bowling in full rhythm with enough lateral movement to exploit, and Bethell was undone by swing and pace simultaneously. It’s never easy to handle balls that move with pace, which was one of the reasons behind Bethell losing his balance and failing to get his back pad out of the line.
But Ricky Ponting deserves appreciation for predicting it, as he often does while commentating, and he read the flaws in Bethell’s technique and India bowlers’ plans brilliantly. For Bethell, it was a challenging period as he tried navigating threats in helpful conditions against a charged-up Indian bowling attack before eventually succumbing to a sensational delivery from India’s workhorse.
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