Ashes 2023: Ricky Ponting lauds Ben Stokes' ability to finish matches, compares England Test captain to MS Dhoni

England captain Ben Stokes played an incredible knock of 154 runs against Australia in the Lord's Test and once again proved why he is regarded so highly.

SportsTak

• Wed • 05 Jul 2023

England captain Ben Stokes played an incredible knock of 154 runs against Australia in the Lord's Test and once again proved why he is regarded so highly. The left-handed batter's belligerence with the bat went in vain as the Three Lions ended up losing the match by 43 runs but Stokes gave the Baggy Greens a real run for their money, and he did so singlehandedly. The southpaw reminded everyone of the outrageous knock he played against the same opposition at Headingley in 2019.

Former Australia captain Ricky Ponting too was nervous when Stokes was batting at his destructive best at the 'mecca of cricket'.

"I thought and everyone probably thought he could do it again because we've seen it happen before, but this was probably, slightly more runs that they were chasing (in 2019)," Ponting said on the latest episode of The ICC Review.

"In the back of everyone's minds, I think once it started playing out the way that it was and how many similarities there were to Headingley in 2019…Steve Smith dropped him…and he was dropped on 116 by Marcus Harris at Headingley, So those sort of ghosts of the past kept coming back out," he added.

Ponting then went on to highlight Stokes' numbers in red-ball cricket which aren't as eye-popping as some of the other players currently and of the past. But the ex-Aussie captain knows what an 'out and out match-winner' Stokes brings to the table, especially when it comes to run chases.

Ponting compared Stokes' ability to former India captain MS Dhoni, who throughout his career played some outstanding knocks for the nation in white-ball cricket and finished several matches with his bat.

"I think any international player is under pressure anytime they walk out to play, but Ben batting in the middle order or later order like he does, probably finds himself in more match-winning opportunity situations than some others might," Ponting said.

"The first one that comes to mind is maybe someone like a Dhoni, who's there at the end in a lot of T20 games, and finishing games, whereas Ben's doing it at the end of Test matches, and there's not, probably not many, many players through the history of the game that have found themselves in that sort of role and are there at the end winning games, and especially as a captain," he opined.