subject: Rahul Dravid Backs Ricky Ponting [print this page] Ricky Ponting one of the finest cricketers of the modern era is going though most difficult phase in his career, the whole cricketing fraternity and cricketing fans was even asking to retire from the game. But, Rahul Dravid is backing Australia's former captain, Ricky Ponting to scome in shape.
The second highest run getter in the Test History, Rahul Dravid has just only overtaken Ricky to be the second place of all time run getting in Test cricket. At one point of time Rahul is travelling in the same ship as now Ricky was in. The Wall, Rahul Dravid was experienced most toughest two years in 2007 & 2008, where he was not scoring runs and just held to his spot in the team. Now, Ricky Ponting is experiencing the same heat and pressure of the Rahul, as Posting's lean run has been longer 22 months without a Test century.
Dravid said before leaving to Australia, in some ways having gone through the rough phase in his career, he found himself cheering, wishing for him to do well in South Africa at that time. Dravid is one of the seven members of the squad to leave before the rest of the side to Australia tour of down under, in order to get read and adjust to the conditions better. He has been through all that himself, and can easily relate Ricky to him. Dravid was watching those Test matches and was in some way hoping that he would score runs. Dravid hopes that Ponting would score runs in this next Test match and then take a bit of a break against them.
However, Ponting himself had asked Dravid to shut out his critics, when he was struggling. 'Don't you even think about retiring' because I just saw some stuff in a few of his innings that suggested he was still a very, very good player', these are the words of Ponting on his meeting with the opposition's No. 3 before the series in India last year. Rahul replied saying, he just said don't let them wear you down, don't let them get you down'. Some of the TV commentators said that this might be the end of Dravid after a dismissal on the Sri Lanka tour last year. But, Dravid has scored 5 more test centuries since his 38th birthday and he is the leading run scorer in Test, even he is the only batsmen to score more than 1000 runs in 2011 colander year.
Similar Dravid to Ponting hasn't looked completely out of sorts. He was in pretty good form on that tour to India; he has only failed to convert fifties into big hundreds. Dravid admitted that he thinks Ponting is still a great player, he even stressed that Ricky Ponting is still the best Australian batsman. Sometimes it is a confidence thing and sometimes things don't go for them. They get a bit of a bad run, even best players get a couple of good balls, and then you lose a bit of confidence and maybe mindset changes, Dravid said.
India Vs Australia four match test series will be staring on the Boxing Day on Dec, 26, and now India's half the team travelling to Australia early.
