Ricky Ponting is unquestionably one of the greatest batters in cricket history. And the 27483 runs he has scored in his international career attest to it. He is also well-known for the notion that he used a spring in his bat during his outstanding performance in the 2003 World Cup final. The former batter’s alert eyes, rather than the spring or his bat, helped him improve.
During a recent talk, the seasoned hitter disclosed that Australian players used to wear spectacles that detected even the tiniest movement of their eyes when confronting a delivery.
And the results showed that Ricky Ponting always saw only the bottom 5% of the leather ball’s circumference.
“We had these glasses that picked up every slight movement of your eyes when you were watching the ball. The big thing that showed up with me was that I only looked at the bottom 5% of the ball. So when the ball was coming down the wicket, my focus point was on the bottom 5%, which was different from what everyone else did,” Ponting said on the Straight Talk podcast with Mark Bouris.
The Tasmania-born is till date known as one of the finest pullers of the cricket ball. it won’t be wrong in saying that his pull shot comes right out of the textbook, and is extremely pleasing on the eyes. Ponting has credited this ability to pull to watching the part of the ball that was hitting the wicket before it bounced off, and that is why he could pull the deliveries that were relatively fuller in length.
“I was able to play pull shots to balls that were fuller than the others. And when I thought about that, maybe it was because I was looking at the part of the ball that was actually hitting the wicket. If you are looking at the top of the ball, it’s going to be longer before you can pick up where the ball’s landing on the wicket,” he explained.
India
