They've made far too many mistakes, says Ricky Ponting on Australia's batting failures

For Ricky Ponting, one of the most successful captains in world cricket, this is something hard to accept. Australia were faced with a mountain to climb in the fourth and final Test against India in Sydney after the visitors declared their first innings at 622 for 7. Given the form the host team’s batters have shown in the series, it is difficult to believe that they can scale this mountain with confidence. The former captain also believed the same and came down heavily on the Australian batsmen.

While India have been plagued by their batsmen’s poor form in the two previous tours of South Africa and England where captain Virat Kohli was the lone warrior, the series against Australia saw a different outcome with Cheteshwar Pujara leading the pack with 521 runs so far. Even Rishabh Pant has joined the ranks with 350 runs to his name. While Pujara hit three hundreds in the series with the highest score of 193 in Sydney, Pant hit an unbeaten 159 in the same Test and Kohli was the other centurion (123) in Perth.

Travis Head is Australia highest run-getter

Australia, on the other hand, have not seen a single centurion in the series so far with their highest score being 72 which was scored twice – by Travis Head in Adelaide and Usman Khawaja in Perth. Head with 217 runs is Australia’s leading run-getter in the series, equalling India’s fourth-highest scorer Ajinkya Rahane who has been ordinary in this series. According to Ricky Ponting, also one of Australia’s most prolific scorers the home team paid for their repeated mistakes of their batsmen.

“As far as I’m concerned, this batting group through this series has made way too many mistakes,” Ponting told cricket.com.au. “Technical, mental, whatever those mistakes may be, they’ve made a lot of mistakes.”

“It hasn’t necessarily been the first mistake they’ve made either that’s led to them getting out. They’ve made a lot of mistakes then eventually got out. To be fair, India have probably had the best of the batting conditions,” he said, adding that the fact only one Australian batsman who featured among the top five scorers in the series showed the little impact the hosts’ batters had in the series.

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