Follow us

Ricky Ponting : Australia will need to get Kohli out of his comfort zone

no image
no image

Ricky Ponting has called for the Australian team to play mind games with Virat Kohli during their four-Test visit starting later this month in order to bring the India skipper out of his comfort zone. The ex-Australia captain said Kohli resembled him owing to his aggressive approach on the field.

"The one thing about Virat Kohli is whenever there's any confrontation, he does get a little bit outside of his comfort zone. You can see that he gets ultra-aggressive, which may be a good thing for him or maybe good for the opposition," Ponting told Zee News.

"We will wait and see what happens. I think he's a similar sort of character to me as well. He wears his heart on his sleeve. He's pretty animated. He's a very aggressive player."

Ponting said Australia should not allow top-ranked India to build any sort of momentum.

"One thing I learnt about playing in India is the momentum that the home team can create, you have to try and stop that," said Ponting, who was a part of the last Australian team to win a Test series in India in 2004-05.

"Someone like Virat, you have to take his boundary-scoring areas away and make him score his runs in different areas or make him bat for a longer time to make his runs.

"Is he (Kohli) the best batsman in the world? Yeah, he probably is. I thought he was six or seven months ago and he's probably taken it to another level since then."

The first Test will start on Feb 23 in Pune.

Comments

Leave a comment

0 Comments

read previousBBL | Twitter reacts to commentators giving Maxwell a reality check as Billings escapes potential runout
It is always necessary to be in the game with utter concentration to avoid giving any opportunity to the opposition. The Melbourne Stars certainly missed out on an opportunity to run out Sam Billings due to lack of appeal as the Sydney Thunder toured at the Manuka Oval, Canberra.
IPL 2017 | Ishant Sharma joins three Englishmen in top bracket of auctionread next
Ishant Sharma is the only Indian in the top bracket of the Indian Premier League auction, along with three England cricketers, two Australians and one Sri Lankan. The other 24 capped Indian cricketers' base price has been listed at ₹30 lakh for the auction to be held in Bengaluru on Feb 20.
View non-AMP page