Ricky Ponting
I was raving about Paul Collingwood the other day, and quite rightly, since he'd just scored 206. But the real star of the Ashes at the moment is the Australian captain, Ricky Ponting.
Ponting rightly pointed out a while ago that there had to be an Australian captain who would lose the Ashes at one point or another. I'm not quite sure there was anyone, however, who thought he would almost single-handedly win them back on his batting alone. But despite good support from a number of batsmen, Pointing increasingly looks like he might just do that — with two centuries in three innings so far, who is to say he won't?
This (scary) fact should come as no surprise, though. Ponting's batting average over his test career is currently 59.52. But just look at his run of scores since the start of the 2005 / 2006 season:
46, 54, 149, 104*, 17, 0*, 56, 3, 71, 53, 117, 11, 120, 143*, 74, 1, 103, 116, 34, 20, 21, 118*, 52, 196, 60*, 142 [* indicates not out]
In 26 innings, Ponting has hit 1881 runs at an average of 89.57. That is incredible. It won't be long, then, before he will be number two on the all-time test batting average, behind probably the most famous batsmen of them all: Donald Bradman.
If England don't retain the Ashes, and there's a very good chance they won't, it will have a lot to do with Ricky Ponting — not just for his captaincy, but for his batting prowess.
Filed in Sport