Hayden’s up and ready to torment the Indians: Ponting

Mohali: Australia captain Ricky Ponting has said opener Matthew Hayden, who failed in both innings in the Bangalore Test, is up and ready to torment the Indians like he did on the previous two tours.

Hayden, who is Australia’s most prolific batsman in India, was dismissed for 0 and 13 in the two innings in the opening Test match of the series at Bangalore. He even struggled in the two tour matches prior to the Test match, aggregating only 50 runs in three innings.

However, the Australian captain is confident Hayden, who spent close to a hour and a half in the nets on Wednesday, will be back to hitting the ball hard in the second Test.

Ponting said, “He’s up and he’s ready, he’s been working exceptionally hard on his fitness and his batting to get back to Test level.

“So if he gets through the first half an hour, we know they fear him anyway, that’s been spoken about since we’ve been here, they feel he’s our best player of spin bowling and if he happens to get through the quicks then he could make some big scores.

“There wasn’t too much he could do about his two dismissals in the Test match … it’s about how you come back and respond to that, and he was in the nets for an hour and a half Wednesday working on different things.”

The Australian captain also said he had noticed a few minor chinks in Hayden’s technique, and had discussed it with him in length. He said, “I was just watching him train and I thought he was a little bit off with one thing and we had a good chat about it, and that’s one of the strengths of our team, a lot of our batters have played so much together that they can identify something that might be slightly off really quickly.”

“That’s really positive stuff around the team, probably doesn’t happen in a lot of other teams around the world, where people are looking out for their mates as much, so if Haydos gets in we all know his appetite for runs, and if he gets in in these conditions we’ve seen how damaging he can be.”