WTC Final 2023: India have fallen into the trap of picking an attack for the 1st inning only – Ricky Ponting slams decision to drop Ashwin

Former Australian skipper Ricky Ponting slammed India’s decision to drop Ravichandran Ashwin for the World Test Championship final against Australia. Ponting feels India has fallen into the trap of picking an attack for the first innings only.

The two-time World Cup-winning captain was baffled by India’s decision to drop play Ravindra Jadeja ahead of Ravichandran Ashwin as he feels the latter would have bowled better than the former. Ponting believes he would have picked one bowler between Umesh Yadav and Shardul Thakur but India went with both.

In fact, Ravichandran Ashwin is the number one Test bowler with 869 rating points. Furthermore, there can be spin on offer at the Oval in the second innings and thus dropping Ashwin was a surprising decision from India.

Meanwhile, India went with two spinners in the WTC Final against New Zealand in 2021 but the decision backfired as they suffered an eight-wicket loss.

On the other hand, Rohit Sharma won the toss and decided to bowl first against Australia with overcast conditions on offer.

“India have fallen into the trap of picking an attack for the first inning of this Test match only. The reason why I was surprised that Ashwin was left out is because of the number of left-handers Australia have. There’s no doubt in my mind that Ashwin would have bowled a lot better than Jadeja later on in the Test,” Ponting said on air during commentary.

“The big decision that they had to make was between Thakur and Umesh. I was leaning towards Thakur because he would be my workhorse to give a bit of a break to the strike bowlers Shami and Siraj. You can go to Jadeja for a couple of overs just to tie the game down a bit,” he added.

After lunch on the opening day, Australia was 73-2 with David Warner and Usman Khawaja dismissed. Assessing the performance of the Indian bowlers, Ponting added the bowlers will have to accept that they are going to get driven by the batters if they bowl a fuller length.

“If India had bowled really well then 60 percent would have been on the fuller side and 20 percent on a good length. I made a point earlier, the bowlers will have to accept that they are gonna get driven every now and then. What the captain can do is maybe have his mid-off and mid-on straighter and deeper which just gives the bowlers encouragement to pitch it up.”

Australia are 117-3 after 34 overs with Steve Smith and Travis Head batting in the middle.