NEW DELHI: After the Men in Blue overcame their bitter rivals Pakistan by 6 runs in the T20 World Cup 2024, former Australia captain Ricky Ponting poured praise on India captain Rohit Sharma, stating that he is very 'experienced'.
Rohit opened the batting and scored 13 runs off of 12 balls, smashing one four and one six. Rohit was removed by Shaheen Afridi in the third over, hence his knock did not last very long.
T20 WORLD CUP:
In a video posted to the ICC's official Instagram account, Ponting praised Rohit for his "outstanding" captaincy against Pakistan on Sunday. In addition to praising Hardik Pandya, the former cricket player added that he was "outstanding" in the crucial game.
"Rohit Sharma is a very experienced captain, isn't he? And I just saw him then and said, mate, your captaincy today was outstanding. I don't think he could have done much more. You think about a lot of the bowlers that he's got in his team. He's actually had those bowlers in the IPL as well, not only for India. So he understands them, knows when he can use them, but it's one thing for the captain to set a plan, the bowlers are going to go ahead and execute it and Hardik was outstanding," Rohit said.
Ponting noted that the second innings' wicket was different. When the sun came out, he said, the wicket dried very rapidly.
"I thought he did a really good job with the ball as well, and then you break it down and this has been a wicket that the seamers have liked, but their spinner bowled four overs for 20 as well and Patel picked up a big wicket. Yeah, the wicket was definitely different in the second innings. I mean, you can see Pakistan got the ball to hold up through natural variation, and you know, it was just a little bit tacky, but when the sun came out, the wicket dried out quite quickly and then you have to, you have to adapt and adjust on the run. I thought he did that really well," he added.
(With ANI inputs)
