Australia increased their lead to 2-0 in the ongoing five-match Ashes Test against England by winning the second Test by 43 runs.
Though England’s Bazball approach failed, skipper Ben Stokes almost single-handedly levelled proceedings, slamming a heroic ton during his side’s second innings.
The explosive all-rounder clobbered 155 runs off 214 balls including nine fours and nine sixes. He was eventually dismissed by Josh Hazlewood.
Former Australia skipper Ricky Ponting compared Stokes’ match-winning ability to that of former India captain MS Dhoni.
“I think any international player is under pressure anytime they walk out to play. However, Ben batting in the middle order or later order like he does, probably finds himself in more match-winning opportunity situations than some others might,” said Ponting while speaking to ICC review.
“The first one that comes to mind is maybe someone like MS Dhoni, who is there at the end in a lot of T20 games, and finishing games, whereas Ben’s doing it at the end of Test matches, and there is not, probably not many, many players through the history of the game that have found themselves in that sort of role and are there at the end winning games, and especially as a captain,” the former Australia captain added.