Former Australia cricketer Shane Lee said he was left stunned by Ricky Ponting’s remark about Virat Kohli in the run-up to the upcoming Border-Gavaskar Trophy. Kohli hasn’t had the best of times in Test cricket recently, especially with 2024 being one of his worst years in the longest format of the game.
The Indian star batter has averaged 22.72 in 6 Tests so far this year, with him not even crossing the 100-run mark during the recent 3-match series against New Zealand. This prompted Ponting to say that Kohli’s dip in form was a concern and even claimed that someone with such a record with wouldn’t have been playing international cricket as a top-order batter. The comments from the former Aussie captain were also criticised by current India coach Gautam Gambhir.
Lee, while talking on Fox Cricket’s podcast The Follow On, said it was a bad move from his former captain and claimed that such remarks would fire up someone like Kohli to do better in Australia.
“That is a bad move, Ricky. What are you doing? You are going to fire that guy up. He is a world class player and he will fire up out here,” said Lee.
Lee expects the BGT series this year to be a spicy affair, especially with the ball-tampering controversy around the India A side and Ponting’s comments about Kohli.
“I think it is going to be a fantastic series. I think there is going to be a bit of spice in this series, definitely with the ball tampering issues in and around the India A team, and particularly now that Ricky Ponting has now come out and given it to Kohli,” said Lee.
While Lee admitted that Australia have a great bowling unit, the batting was a concern for him and went on to predict India could retain the BGT title with a 2-2 series draw.
“We have a world class attack with (Mitchell) Starc, (Pat) Cummins, (Josh) Hazlewood and (Nathan) Lyon. I mean, ‘c’mon’. It doesn’t get much better than that,” said Lee.
“(But) our batting is fragile. It is probably one of the weaker batting line-ups I have seen for an Australian Test side in a long while. (Nathan) McSweeney is going to come in and he is under pressure, because he has never batted as an opener, and I think that is a specialist position.”
“(Usman) Khawaja is the stand out for me (for Australia) at the moment. He is going to play really well. (Marnus) Labuschagne, for me, has been out of form for a while, as has Steve Smith.”
“It is going to come down to our batting and how well we can handle pressure, particularly with (Jasprit) Bumrah and their pace attack steaming in when the wicket is doing a bit.”
Kohli has an average of 54.08 and has scored 1352 runs in 13 matches in Australia.
