Cricket: Ponting doubts our practice makes perfect

Ricky Ponting

Ricky Ponting, an advocate of high-intensity training, has raised an involuntary eyebrow over New Zealand's practice methods - just a day out from the second Chappell-Hadlee one-dayer in Wellington.

Besieged New Zealand batsman Hamish Marshall and all-rounder Scott Styris revealed this week that they didn't believe in net practices.

Instead, they would continue to prepare for tonight's re-match with mere throw-downs, rather than the Australian tactic of facing their own front-line bowlers.

Marshall and Styris' theory is unheard of in Australia, and rather contradicts Ponting's call before the Super Series for improved practice in terms of intensity, competitive bowling in the nets from the side's specialist bowlers, and more match simulation for the batsmen.

Styris was unlucky to fall to a brilliant catch on Saturday, but Marshall has been trapped in a terrible rut for the past couple of months, and needs to produce some runs quickly if he wants to retain his place over the summer.

"I'm not going to tell anyone the way they should be preparing themselves," said Ponting.

"But you'd imagine they [New Zealand] would be trying to do everything they could to make their training as realistic as possible.

"That's what I'd try and do anyway. I like my training to be as game-like as I can get it.

"It doesn't matter if I'm going good or bad - I'd rather face Lee, McGrath and Bracken than the net bowlers."

Ponting said he understood the reluctance of batsmen to spend long hours in the nets facing local club hacks.

However, he believed there was merit in going back to the old system of having the team's front-line bowlers attacking the side's top-order batsmen - with intensity.

"At least our bowlers know what they're going to bowl and how they're going to bowl," he said.

"With the net bowlers you've got no idea and sometimes they've got no idea where the ball's going either. So that's the way I'd like to do it."

Despite last weekend's carnage, New Zealand skipper Daniel Vettori said his side needed to push aside any lingering effects from the loss, to ensure they were in a healthy frame of mind for tonight's contest, and looking forwards rather than backwards.

Vettori, the stand-in skipper in Stephen Fleming's absence, said team management had considered the idea of promoting Brendon McCullum up the order, before eventually shelving it in favour of showing confidence in the incumbents.

"It's entered our head a little bit but we've also gone back to the fact that we've got confidence in the first two or three guys, who have done the job for us on numerous occasions in the past.

"They're having a little bit of a bad trot at the moment but we still think that they can do it.

"We don't want to be knee-jerk about anything - we don't want to say after one game we're going to give up on them. We want them to go out there and do the job."

The weather in Wellington has been patchy over the past couple of days, including thunderstorms and torrential rain yesterday morning, but the skies had begun to clear last night and the match should proceed.

New Zealand last night jettisoned Chris Martin from their 13. Australia will name their line-up this morning.

THE TEAMS

New Zealand

Daniel Vettori (captain), Nathan Astle, Lou Vincent, Hamish Marshall, Scott Styris, Craig McMillan, Chris Cairns, Jacob Oram, Brendon McCullum, Daniel Vettori, Kyle Mills, James Marshall.

Australia (from)

Ricky Ponting (captain), Adam Gilchrist, Simon Katich, Brad Hodge, Michael Clarke, Andrew Symonds, Michael Hussey, Brad Hogg, Brett Lee, Stuart Clark, Nathan Bracken, Cameron White, Mick Lewis.