IND vs AUS | India's resilience has got to break at some stage, hopes Ricky Ponting 

IND vs AUS | India's resilience has got to break at some stage, hopes Ricky Ponting 

no photo

India and Australia will play the final day of the series tomorrow

|

Twitter

Former Australian skipper Ricky Ponting is hopeful that India's resilience in the series will give in sometime and wants tomorrow, Day 5 of Gabba, to be that day. He also added that a drawn series here will be even worse than the series loss in the 2018/19 tour when India defeated Australia 2-1.

India's fight, grit, determination and resilience has been the talking point of the ongoing Border-Gavaskar trophy. Considered as one of the greatest Test series between the two nations, it will be coming to a close tomorrow with the game hanging in the balance with Australia, currently, having a slight edge. Situations, venues, challenges all have changed with every passing day in the series but not India's fighting spirit, which saw them conquer the MCG challenge coming from the Adelaide debacle and then salvage an improbable draw at SCG in face of injuries. 

Even at the Gabba, India were able to take 20 wickets with an inexperienced attack and now need 324 runs on final day to win the series with 10 wickets in hand. However, World Cup-winning captain Ricky Ponting is hoping for India's resilience to come to an end on the final day of the Gabba Test.

"India's resilience has got to give up at some stage. They can't keep doing what they've been doing, being so resilient, and tomorrow it might be that day. The last day of the series, potentially playing for another draw, I've just got a feeling that something's got to give. And Australia, on the other hand, they know they have to go flat out and give everything to win the series," Ponting told cricket.com.au.

Ponting also feels that given India have been hit by injuries and Australia had more or less the full-strength side, a drawn series will be a far worse result than the series loss which they suffered last time, two years ago.

"I think a drawn series will be worse than the loss a couple of years ago. That's the way I look at it, considering how hard India have found it going through 20 players in a series, (Australia) having (David) Warner back for the last couple of games, (Steve) Smith back for all them that they didn't have last time around.

"A draw would not only feel like a loss to them but be a worse result than the last series," he added.

Rohit Sharma and Shubman Gill have done a good job for India since the SCG Test. Given both get on top of the bounce and are quite good at playing positively, the duo will be key to India's hopes for a draw or a win on the final day of a memorable series. The former Aussie skipper also didn't rule out the promotion of Rishabh Pant on Tuesday and feels Pujara might push India back in the chase. 

"Rohit and Gill have every chance to get them off to a good start. If they do do that I think they might use Rishabh Pant up the order again, like they did in Sydney, because if it does get down to a run chase and (India are) behind the (required) run rate early on. I can't see how Pujara is going to be the guy to drag them back into the chase."

The former Aussie skipper also added that the start of play will help us understand whether India plan to go for a win.

"It's going to be intriguing to me to see if they come out with the thought of trying to win the game or if they're happy to try and defend and sit on it and block the day out and not even entertain (thoughts of) going for the runs."

"That story will be told pretty early on in the day tomorrow," he added.

Get updates! Follow us on

Open all