He’s always trying to move the game forward: Ricky Ponting on Ben Stokes’ captaincy

Former Australian skipper Ricky Ponting has showered praise on Ben Stokes’ captaincy, stating he is always trying to move the game forward. Stokes took a controversial decision to declare England’s first innings at 393-8 when Joe Root and Ollie Robinson were batting at 118 and 17 respectively.

Furthermore, Stokes was aggressive with his field placements and bowling changes. Under Stokes, England has won 11 Test matches and they have lost two games. Stokes is known to take the bull by its horns and England batters have adopted an aggressive batting approach under his leadership.

Speaking to ICC Ponting said, “It’s hard to keep up with them all, he’s making a change almost every ball, which is great, it’s proactive captaincy. He’s always trying to move the game forward, he’s looking at any little way that he possibly can to pick up a wicket and change the momentum of the game.”

“You don’t see that every day. And that’s a sign of what’s to come, but also a sign of this change of attitude from the current England team,” he added.

In the last 12 months, England has adopted Bazball and they have reaped rewards for the same against quality teams. Moving into the Ashes, there was a lot of chatter if England could continue to play a similar brand of cricket against the relentless Australian pace battery.

“There was a lot of chat around ‘will Bazball stand up? Are they going to be courageous enough to play that way against the Australians?’,” Ponting said.

“Well, I think that question has been answered for us,” he noted.

“It’s certainly there, the way that they want to play, this bold new approach to Test match cricket, trying to make bold decisions at any stage in the game where they can.

At the end of the third day’s play, England were 28-2 and they were leading by 35 runs. Australia scored 386 runs after Usman Khawaja top-scored with 141 runs.