Ricky Ponting
The Australian captain talks about the Australian victory, choosing to bowl and Michael Clarke returing home.
On the feeling in the team after today’s performance…
“Excellent, very good. That’s what we have been talking about for the last couple of games, what we have been asking our top order to deliver and I said to the boys this morning that I know that if someone in our top order gets 80+ or 100 that we are going to get well over 300 every time we bat with the nature of these grounds over here and we were on target to do that tonight. Luckily we were chasing 240, the bowlers did a great job there I thought, taking wickets consistently through the New Zealand batting innings so this has been the performance we have been after really for the first couple of games, its been a lot more commanding performance and Haddin has obviously been a massive role in us winning tonight.”
On bowling first…
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“It’s a lot more relevant in these sort of venues and in New Zealand where the grounds are smaller. Chasing runs becomes a bit easier here. I think its New Zealand’s favoured way of playing as well is to chase runs, they tend to do that and be pretty comfortable in doing that. A couple of series here in the past they have done it well against us so that might just through them out a little bit and particularly today when our batters needed a bit more direction, needed to have some targets to achieve and I think we did that really well today. So back to Auckland on Thursday and that’s a ground where chasing runs is pretty achievable as well so we will think about that again.”
On the momentum the team can take from todays win…
“It was a very convincing win tonight, to take our powerplay as late as we did and really count it across the line from about 30 overs onwards, we did it pretty easily. But this game changes really quickly, we cant afford to think its just going to happen again for us on Thursday. We have to get out there and look to improve our cricket again. We have been looking for this performance for the entire series and we have played our best game to date today so the momentum, if there is any, to be taken out of this game is obviously with us so if we start the game strongly on Thursday hopefully the momentum continues for us there.”
On the departure of Clarke from the Australian Team…
“I can’t tell you anything. I think you know he is home sorting out some personal stuff. Most of the players either found out last night or this morning. It created a great opportunity for Voges to come into the side. He has been on the perimeter for the last couple of years really and not had a lot of opportunities so even for him to go out there tonight to go out there and finish the game off and get a bit of time was good for us.”
“You’re always going to miss your vice captain, a guy that has played 170 odd games and your number 4 batsman. You’re going to miss them but we covered really well for him tonight and I’m sure we will for the rest of the series.”
“I haven’t heard from him today and I don’t expect to. We will give him as much time as he needs and all that we can do is give him as much support as possible as he knows from all of us in the team that he has got all the support he needs. The last thing that I said to him the last night before he left was for him to take as much time as he needed and hopefully we can do the right thing over here and win the series without him.”
Brad Haddin:
On his batting performance today…
“I felt pretty comfortable today. I think the majority of our top order has been in pretty good nick since we have got to New Zealand and Ricky obviously challenged us over the last couple of days for a couple of us to go on and spend some time out in the middle and get a couple of big partnerships in and for some guys to come in and get some 80’s and I was lucky enough to get 100 tonight It was good fun.
