Former Australia captain Ricky Ponting yesterday said a day-night match could help secure Hobart’s status as a Test host and rounded on “unfair” criticism of the Tasmanian capital.
Speculation has risen over Hobart’s future as a Test venue amid fears that just 10,000 fans are to attend the first four days of Australia’s first Test against the West Indies, starting today.
Hobart has hosted 11 Australia Tests since their first against Sri Lanka in 1989, but the city is not on the annual rota of Test venues like the mainland Australian capital cities.
Photo: AFP
Ponting, who was honored by the unveiling of a statue at his old Bellerive Oval home ground yesterday, said that criticism of Hobart as a Test venue is unjust.
“I think some of the criticism has been a little unfair. What I would like to see happen here is that Hobart and Tasmania get a Test match every year,” Ponting told reporters.
“It is hard to make assumptions on Tasmanian cricket or people watching Test cricket in Australia when there is no continuity where the games are. The Tasmanian public are being judged on Test matches against lower-ranked teams. Let us have an Ashes Test here, let us have Tests against South Africa and India here and then we can start making some judgements and comparisons about other venues around Australia,” he added.
After 123,000 fans flocked to the first-ever day-night Test in Adelaide last month, Ponting was asked if a Test under floodlights would reinvigorate Hobart.
“If that is what it is going to take down here, then absolutely,” he said. “If the attendances are down over the next few days down here, it might be what Hobart needs, and it has already got unbelievable world-class facilities and lights.”
Ponting, who is a member of the MCC World Cricket committee, said the future of Tests is one of the big questions facing the sport.
“I have been talking for the last few weeks with the World Cricket committee about Test match attendances around the world and how they are starting to fall away, which is why we saw a day-night Test match in Adelaide,” he said.
“Australia is strong, but when we go to places like Sri Lanka, India and the West Indies, that is when you start to see those numbers drop off,” he added.
Ponting said a contributing factor was the recent retirement of some of cricket’s leading stars.
“The other thing we have to think about is that the real star players that were around the game five or six years ago have all retired at once,” he said.
“There is no [Jacques] Kallis, there is no [Brian] Lara, there is no [Sachin] Tendulkar. These guys have all left the game in a quite recent period of time,” Ponting added.
Taiwanese tennis veteran Hsieh Su-wei (謝淑薇) and her Latvian partner Jelena Ostapenko finished runners-up in the Wimbledon women's doubles final yesterday, losing 6-3, 2-6, 4-6. The three-set match against Veronika Kudermetova of Russia and Elise Mertens of Belgium lasted two hours and 23 minutes. The loss denied 39-year-old Hsieh a chance to claim her 10th Grand Slam title. Although the Taiwanese-Latvian duo trailed 1-3 in the opening set, they rallied with two service breaks to take it 6-3. In the second set, Mertens and Kudermetova raced to a 5-1 lead and wrapped it up 6-2 to even the match. In the final set, Hsieh and
Taiwanese tennis veteran Hsieh Su-wei and her Latvian partner, Jelena Ostapenko, advanced to the Wimbledon women’s doubles final on Friday, defeating top seeds Katerina Siniakova of the Czech Republic and Taylor Townsend of the US in straight sets. The fourth-seeded duo bounced back quickly after losing their opening service game, capitalizing on frequent unforced errors by their opponents to take the first set 7-5. Maintaining their momentum in the second set, Hsieh and Ostapenko broke serve early and held their lead to close out the match 6-4. They are set to face the eighth-seeded pair of Veronika Kudermetova of Russia and Elise Mertens
Outside Anfield, the red sea of tributes to Diogo Jota and his brother, Andre Silva, has continued to grow this week, along with questions over whether Liverpool could play at Preston today, their first game since the brothers’ tragic loss. Inside Anfield, and specifically a grieving Liverpool dressing room, there was no major debate over the pre-season friendly. The English Premier League champions intend to honor their teammate in the best way they know how. It would be only 10 days since the deaths of Jota and Silva when Liverpool appear at Deepdale Stadium for what is certain to be a hugely
ON A KNEE: In the MLB’s equivalent of soccer’s penalty-kicks shoot-out, the game was decided by three batters from each side taking three swings each off coaches Kyle Schwarber was nervous. He had played in Game 7 of the MLB World Series and homered for the US in the World Baseball Classic (WBC), but he had never walked up to the plate in an All-Star Game swing-off. No one had. “That’s kind of like the baseball version of a shoot-out,” Schwarber said after homering on all three of his swings, going down to his left knee on the final one, to overcome a two-homer deficit. That held up when Jonathan Aranda fell short on the American League’s final three swings, giving the National League a 4-3 swing-off win after
RSS