MELBOURNE: Australia cricket captain Ricky Ponting appears on course to play Pakistan in Saturday’s opening Test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground after getting through a vital batting session at training here on Thursday. Ponting’s Christmas wish will be limited pain in his injured elbow on Friday after he batted without obvious discomfort across several stints at training.
Ponting faced only eight minutes of throw-downs from coach Tim Nielsen before he went into the change rooms to be assessed by physiotherapist Alex Kountouris.
But he returned and spent 25 minutes in the nets in two stints, one against Shane Watson and some young fast bowlers, and the other against spinners.
He did not look hampered by the injury he suffered in the third Test against the West Indies in Perth, where he was struck by a delivery from speedster Kemar Roach, which caused tendon damage.
Ponting and his team-mates will train on Friday before they share Christmas lunch, but on Thursday his deputy Michael Clarke expected his skipper to play.
“He’ll have to see how he pulls up tomorrow but we’re all pretty confident ... it looked like he hit the ball quite well, he’s obviously in very good form and fingers crossed he pulls up all right tomorrow,” Clarke said.
If Ponting is ruled out he will be replaced by Phillip Hughes in the line-up and by Clarke as captain, but the vice-captain said he had not pondered leading the side.
“Not at all,” Clarke said. All the boys have been very confident throughout the whole week that Ricky would pull up pretty good for this game.
“It was good to see him have a good bat today and we’ll wait and see how he pulls up tomorrow to confirm that.
“He’s a very tough bloke and cricketer and you’d probably have to cut his arm off for him to miss the Boxing Day Test match.”
Meanwhile, batsman Mike Hussey said the Australians had been studying video footage of Pakistani players and had been impressed.
“I think it’s going to be a really tough series. They’ve got a lot of matchwinners, and a lot of very dangerous [players], particularly bowlers,’’ Hussey said. ‘’I think they’ve got an outstanding team, their attack is going to be very challenging for all our batsmen.’’
Opener Simon Katich said Australia’s bowlers wouldn’t have things all their own way either against a top order anchored by captain Mohammad Yousuf and boasting the exciting talent of 19-year-old batsman Umar Akmal, brother of wicketkeeper Kamran, who made a century on debut in New Zealand last month.
“They’ve got some exciting young players, both batsmen and bowlers,’’ Katich said. ‘’Having had a look at the footage, we expect it to be a tough challenge, particularly from a batting point of view.’’
Australian keeper Brad Haddin said the element of surprise made Boxing Day all the more tantalising.
“As we’ve seen in the tour game [against Tasmania], they’ve got some batters in form and a pretty strong bowling attack,’’ Haddin said.
“It’s always exciting, Boxing Day, but playing against Pakistan makes it even more so because they’re so unpredictable.’’
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