Yashasvi Jaiswal's unnecessary sledge the reason behind Mitchell Starc's fiery performance in Adelaide: Ricky Ponting
Ricky Ponting stated that Mitchell Starc's performance was fired up by his back-and-forth with Yashasvi Jaiswal.
Mitchell Starc’s destructive performance with the pink ball helped Australia pull off a comfortable 10-wicket win over India to seal the Adelaide Test match, and level the Border-Gavaskar Trophy at 1-1 heading into the third match. Starc took career-best figures of 6-48, his first innings performance breaking open the Indian batting order.
Starc’s performance started in phenomenal fashion, as he trapped Yashasvi Jaiswal LBW on the very first delivery of the Test match with a full and straight one that caught the young left-hander off-balance. It began a strong innings for Starc, in which he also dismissed KL Rahul and Virat Kohli.
As per former Australian captain Ricky Ponting, Jaiswal’s decision to sledge Starc in Perth, where he said that the tall left-armer’s deliveries weren’t ‘quick enough’ during his match-winning century at the Optus Stadium.
"He's actually a pretty level-headed guy, Mitchell Starc. He doesn't get flustered too much, you see when he's bowling now. And if one of the batters does happen to say something, he generally responds with a little smile on his face," said Ponting on the ICC Review show.
"But I think that smile on his face might be just a bit of a cover for the fire that's burning inside. Look, he bowled beautifully in Adelaide didn't he," added the legendary batter.
‘What you would expect from the Australian team…’
More than firing up Starc, Ponting said he was glad to see Australia bounce back powerfully from the loss in Perth to put up a clinical performance at the Adelaide Oval: "That's the sort of bounce-back that you would expect from the Australian team. Their senior players standing up and Travis (Head) doing what he did. That's what they needed to do.”
"I said in the lead-up that Australia's senior players had to really stand up and change what had happened in Perth,” continued Ponting. “When they lost the toss, and Australia were bowling, it was up to Cummins and Starc to set the tone from the very start of that game. Starc takes a wicket first ball, happens to beat Jaiswal that had made 160 in the last innings he played against Australia. And that really set the tone for the whole Test match.”
“So they got the job done and now they've got to do it again next week in Brisbane," concluded the former Australian captain.
Australia and India return to action at the Gabba in Brisbane, beginning on December 14.
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