The Australian batting legend invoked an interesting comparison of England captain with a giant Indian name following his great knock at Lord's.
Ricky Ponting marvelled at the terrific knock played by England skipper Ben Stokes on the riveting final day’s play in the Lord’s Ashes 2023 Test and compared the match-winning abilities of the left-hander with a special Indian name.
For the Australian batting legend, Stokes’ ability to soak in the pressure and extract the maximum out of his game when the chips are down for England is similar to great MS Dhoni’s calming streak under the deepest of strife.
Ponting said as Dhoni did for a decade and a half playing in India colours, especially in limited-overs cricket, Stokes is able to take his game two notches higher when his team has its backs against the wall. The word of compliment by the Aussie giant was lavished in wake of another of England allrounder’s rearguard tons on Day 5 at Lord’s in the Ashes.
For a good couple of hours, Stokes threatened to take the game away from the Australians by rocketing along to a memorable 155 off 214 deliveries. Even though he ultimately couldn’t propel the hosts through in an intimidating chase of 371, the aggressive cricketer did rub on the scars that the Aussies would still carry from his Headingley special back in 2019, when his 135 not out scripted an unlikely one-wicket victory.
Ponting said watching Stokes enter the beast mode on the thrilling final day at Lord’s made him fear for a repeat of the legendary knock in Leeds and he was only relieved when the left-hander eventually miscued one of his attempted big strokes to the hands of wicketkeeper Alex Carey.
“I thought and everyone probably thought he could do it again because we’ve seen it happen before, but this was probably, slightly more runs that they were chasing (in 2019),” Ponting said on ‘The ICC Review’ show.
“In the back of the back of everyone’s minds, I think once it started playing out the way that it was and how many similarities there were to Headingley in 2019…Steve Smith dropped him…and he was dropped on 116 by Marcus Harris at Headingley, So those sort of ghosts of the past kept coming back out,” he added.
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The great Australian batter turned commentator emphasized on Stokes’ pressure-handling abilities and likened him with the legend of Dhoni to reinforce praise over this attribute of the England captain’s game on the field.
“I think any international player is under pressure anytime they walk out to play, but Ben batting in the middle order or later order like he does, probably finds himself in more match-winning opportunity situations than some others might,” Ponting said.
“The first one that comes to mind is maybe someone like a Dhoni, who’s there at the end in a lot of T20 games, and finishing games, whereas Ben’s doing it at the end of Test matches, and there’s not, probably not many, many players through the history of the game that have found themselves in that sort of role and are there at the end winning games, and especially as a captain.”
