Ricky Ponting is surprised with Suryakumar Yadav's exclusion from India's main squad for the World Test Championship final scheduled to begin on June 7 next month. He also backed Ishan Kishan to provide the much-needed 'X' factor to the team.
Suryakumar, who made his Test debut against Australia at home earlier this year is named among the standby players. In the one Test match that he played, Surya scored eight runs.
Asked if Suryakumar should have been in the squad, Ponting expressed surprise and said "Yes".
An injury to KL Rahul has made way for Kishan, who Ponting thinks has a lot of potential to bat in the middle order.
"There is another X factor that has just been added in, Ishan Kishan. If you look at the way he plays, he is probably the most like Rishabh Pant with his potential to keep and bat in the middle order.
"If they do play those guys they should be given the right to play an aggressive brand of cricket.
"The best chance for India to achieve a result is by being a bit more adventurous in the way they play and Australia will try to do the same thing," said Ponting in response to a PTI query.
Ponting, who is also the head coach of the IPL team Delhi Capitals, revealed his chat with Virat Kohli during a match against Royal Challengers Bangalore
"I caught up with Virat about a month ago when we played them in Bangalore. I had a good chat with him about his batting and where he was at in his career. And he said to me then that he actually feels like he's almost back to his absolute best," Ponting said.
He spoke about Rohit Sharma's captaincy
"It is not about a field change or bowling change or batting order. It is about how you interact with them. More than 50 percent of captaincy is done off the field. Knowing Rohit as well as I do, he is a very caring person and if you do that, you get performance out of your players," he added.
