Ashes 2019 | Australia should consider opening with Usman Khawaja, opines Ricky Ponting
Former Australian skipper Ricky Ponting has warned his team against dropping veteran batsman Usman Khawaja for the fourth Test at Manchester. With Steve Smith all set to return for the Manchester Test, reports have suggested that the Queenslander might get the axe to accommodate him in the team.
The Australian team management will have a massive selection call to make in the fourth selection with talisman Steve Smith all set to return to the side. The man who replaced him, Marnus Labuschagne, has impressed with three fifties in a row, which makes him more or less a certainty in the side. This means that the other man in the middle-order, Usman Khawaja, might have to make way for Smith, but former skipper Ricky Ponting has batted for his inclusion, stating that he'd be "loath" to leave Khawaja out.
"Thankfully I'm not a selector, I wouldn't want to be making that call," Ponting told cricket.com.au.
"Reading some of the stuff today I know there's a bit of stuff about Usman Khawaja (missing out), but he is a class player. I'd be loath to leave him out, but then you've got Matthew Wade who has made a hundred in the first Test and Travis Head who averages nearly 50 in Test cricket," he added.
However, the former skipper has his own solution to the problem. Ponting believes that Australia must look at moving Khawaja up the order and open the batting with David Warner, meaning Smith will come in effectively at the expense of Marcus Harris.
"Or you look back at the top and you might look at Marcus Harris again and open the batting with Khawaja and maybe bat Marnus at three and Smith at four. It's going to be a tough selection," he said.
Furthermore, Ponting showered praise on another Queenslander Labuschagne, who has made batting look easy for this series and has turned out to be the perfect "like for like" replacement for Smith. He hailed the 25-year-old's organized style of batting, while also adding that it'll now be impossible for the Aussies to leave him out. Â
"It's going to be pretty hard to leave Marnus out now, isn't it?. He played beautifully in the first innings and he's doing the job in the second innings. I said it when he played that Test match in Sydney (against India in January) as well, I hadn't seen much of him in domestic (cricket), I saw a little bit of the way he started his Test career in the UAE but he just looks like a pretty organised player to me. It just looks like he fits at Test level as far as I'm concerned. It would be hard to leave him out," Ponting said.