Sydney, July 26 (IANS) Australian cricket captain Ricky Ponting feels that the tour to India in October will not be an ideal preparation for his team for the Ashes against England in late November.
The India tour was initially scheduled to consist of seven 50-over matches, but Cricket Australia (CA) agreed to the host’s request to change that to two Tests and three one-dayers.
The two Tests, in Mohali and Bangalore, should help Australia to prepare for the Ashes, but Ponting feels that pitch characteristics in India will be different to those expected for the Ashes opener at the Gabba in late November.
‘If you were trying to set down and map out your perfect preparation for an Ashes series or a home series it probably wouldn’t be playing two Test matches in India. But you don’t live in an ideal world. We’ll wait and see who we’ve got that’s fit and ready to go for that tour and pick a squad of players we think can win a Test series over there, and then worry about the start of the Ashes after that,’ Ponting was quoted as saying by the Sydney Morning Herald.
According to Ponting, the prospect of changes to Australia’s batting line-up in time for October’s Test tour of India is remote.
‘I think you can look at all of our batsmen through this tour. We’ve faced some pretty challenging conditions at different times. Both innings at Lord’s the ball got around a fair bit, certainly the first innings here (Headingley) were probably the most challenging conditions that any of us have batted in,’ he said.
‘We all analyse ourselves pretty closely and we all want to play well all the time but unfortunately that’s not the way this game works. But if you’re going to win Test matches you have to have five or six or seven of your guys playing well each game and we probably didn’t have that in this particular Test match,’ said Ponting.
