Ponting dropped or rested?

B D Narayankar

THE debate is fast raging worldwide. Has Australian captain Ricky Ponting dropped or rested for the next two one-day internationals against New Zealand.

Australia's four successive one-day defeats propped up a question mark on the abilities of Ricky Ponting's leadership. He was fine when old war-horses Glenn MacGrath and Shane Warne were at the helm of affairs, wrecking the opposition sides with their sheer aggressive performances.

Even the loss of Adam Gilchrist and Mathew Hayden has left Ricky Ponting in the lurch. They were both devastating and aggressive players who could change the complexion of the game in Australia's favour.

It's been difficult for Ricky to lift the young and inexperienced side as he used to do with the help of Shane Warne, MacGrath, Gilchrist and Hayden.

A captain is successful and rated high when he is able to lift the morale of the team when the chips are down. The reason for Imran Khan and Sunil Gavaskar being the greatest captains of their era was they could elicit best out of the given resources. Gavaskar marshalled the resources to win Benson and Hedges World Series in Australia and Imran did it by uniting the Pakistan team to win World Cup in 1990s, from nowhere.

It's rather easy to be a captain of a champion side, but is tough to lead a young and inexperienced side. Ricky fails in this department. Just look at what has been his performance in the recent past with young turks - it's dismal.

He lost the one-day series against India and South Africa in the just-concluded test and one-day series. In this process, Team Australia also lost its number one status in one-dayers to South Africa.

Now it's up to Michael Clarke to prove his mettle and bring back glory to the Australians, who have been proud of for over one decade.