Former Australian captain Ricky Ponting has finally zeroed down on his choice for Usman LKhawaja’s opening partner for the Test team ahead of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. After watching the ongoing India A vs Australia A clash and carefully deliberating his options, Ponting picked the South Australian Nathan McSweeney and none of Sam Konstas, Cameron Bancroft or Marcus Harris.
Ponting leaned in McSweeney’s favour saying that the only other competition according to him was Konstas and he might be just too young to be opening for Australia and playing in Perth and Adelaide against a team like India.
“I thought a bit more about it, and he is so young and he has probably not even played on grounds like Optus Stadium or at the Gabba,” Ponting told the ICC Review show. “He wouldn’t have played a pink-ball [match] at Adelaide Oval either. So there’s a lot of things that stack up against the young guy, although there’s no doubt that he’s got talent,” Ponting added.
Since Australia deployed the Steve Smith move, Ponting opined that if the World Test champions had to go back to Bancroft or Marcus Harris, they’d have done last year only since Usman Khawaja isn’t getting any younger. However, for him the time may be ripe for McSweeney, who is the most experienced among the possible options.
“Another thing that I’d said then was that I don’t think they’d go back to a Bancroft or Harris – because if they’re willing to do that, they would’ve done it the last year.
“So the only name left for me more or less is Nathan McSweeney… he got the most out of any of those guys from the A game in Australia at the moment. And he’s more experienced. He has captained Australia A in the past, and he’s captaining them now. So I’m leaning towards McSweeney now for that opening role at the start of the Australian summer,” Ponting added.
With McSweeney unbeaten on 47 and Australia A needing 86 runs to win, the South Australian batter getting a big score and leading his side to a win might just weigh the pendulum in his favour rather nicely after he has already expressed his excitement to be ready for the opening job despite batting in the middle all his life.
