Ben Stokes further polished his reputation as a modern legend after producing a thrilling show with the bat and even though his effort didn’t culminate in an England win, the century he scored at Lord’s against a fired up Australian pace attack was worth its weight in gold. Now, AUS legend Ricky Ponting has massively praised Stokes.
Ponting said on ICC Review –
“I think any international player is under pressure anytime they walk out to play, but Ben batting in the middle order or later order like he does, probably finds himself in more match-winning opportunity situations than some others might.”
Ponting added – “The first one that comes to mind is maybe someone like a MS Dhoni, who’s there at the end in a lot of T20 games, and finishing games, whereas Ben’s doing it at the end of Test matches, and there’s not, probably not many.
“Many players through the history of the game that have found themselves in that sort of role and are there at the end winning games, and especially as a captain.
Ponting further said –
“I thought and everyone probably thought he could do it again because we’ve seen it happen before, but this was probably, slightly more runs that they were chasing (in 2019)”, In the back of the back of everyone’s minds.
“I think once it started playing out the way that it was and how many similarities there were to Headingley in 2019…Steve Smith dropped him…and he was dropped on 116 by Marcus Harris at Headingley, So those sort of ghosts of the past kept coming back out.
