AUS vs IND, 2ND Test: Ricky Ponting says that Virat Kohli will be the captain of India for as long as he wishes
Australia vs India, 2ND Test: Virat Kohli has granted a paternity leave from BCCI to stay with his wife for their newly born child. He played the 1st Test match and left for home after that, Ajinkya Rahane led India in the second Test. Meanwhile, Ricky Pointing praises Virat Kohli’s Test captaincy.
The former Australian skipper, Ricky Ponting feels that Virat Kohli can captain team India for as long as he wants. Kohli returned home after a humiliating 8-wicket defeat in the first Test match at Adelaide Oval. BCCI has given him paternity leave so he can be with his wife Anushka Sharma for their first newly born child. Virat Kohli was pretty confident at the decision of Ajinkya Rahane’s captaincy behind his back and he already proved that in the 2nd day of 2nd Test at Melbourne Cricket Ground.
India is dominating in the boxing-day Test. They started very well on day one, bowling first they destroyed the Australian batting line-up as and Ravichandran Ashwin starred for the day with four and three wickets respectively. The Australian team was bowled out at a below-average total of 195 runs.
India still is on the driving seat on day 2 with the visitors scoring 277/5 at the end of stumps, day 2. The side has taken 82 runs to lead over Australia, with the special innings from the skipper, Rahane. The hosts were off to a good start after picking-up early wickets but India dominated well in the final session after Ajinkya Rahane and Ravindra Jadeja had a firm defence to take India back in the match, putting a 104 runs stand for the sixth wicket.
There were unexpected rain showers at Melbourne Cricket Ground so that match was stopped twice on the day. At the first break, the rain vanished early but in the final session, it was lowlight with rain, the umpires called-off for the day.
‘I am not doubting Kohli’
“I think he’s done a great job to pick up the pieces from Adelaide with this team, led really well in the field yesterday and you can see he’s playing like a captain now as well,”
Ricky Ponting said on cricket.com.au.
“He wants to play that captain’s knock; he wants to get a hundred in Virat’s absence and do the best thing he can to try and drag his country and his team back into this series. Virat will be captain of India as long as he wants to, but if he thinks standing down is going to make him an even better player, then that’s a scary thing for world cricket,”
he added.
Ajinkya Rahane 104* (200) and Ravindra Jadeja 40* (104) are unbeaten at the end of day 2 and they will continue the proceeding on day three of the second Test.
The skipper has scored an eight overseas century today and 1st as a captain of India. With this knock, full of patience, Rahane has become the second Indian to score a century in the first match as a captain against Australia. Virat Kohli was the first one to achieve that milestone in 2014 when he scored the century at Adelaide.
The former Australian cricketer, Ricky Ponting lauded Rahane’s captaincy and he was quite impressed by the way Rahane presented India in the second Test match.
“I’m not doubting Kohli’s captaincy skills or credentials at all, I’m just saying it’s going to take something special to pick up the pieces and Rahane’s been able to do that so far. I don’t think there’ll be pressure from anywhere else for Kohli to do that but let’s wait and see. He’s almost played a (Cheteshwar) Pujara-like innings,” said Ricky Ponting.
The third day of the second Test will resume in a few hours and we will see that if India keeps playing with the same decency and marks their win at Melbourne as a revenge of 1st Test defeat or will Aussies bowlers show the magic to turn the match upside down.