MOHALI - Indian paceman Ishant Sharma's "unusual angles" have utterly confounded Australian cricket captain Ricky Ponting.
Since his outstanding 123 on the first day of the first test in Bangalore, an innings ended by his "old nemesis" Harbhajan Singh, Ponting has had no answer to his new one.
Bowling with increased pace and all of the same movement that first worried Ponting in Australia last summer, Sharma has defeated Ponting three times in as many attempts, meaning he has now taken the scalp of arguably the world's premier batsman five times in as many tests.
Ponting, dissecting a 320-run second test loss yesterday, says in addition to being a very fine pace bowler, Sharma is an operator capable of posing questions that very few international pacemen can conjure.
In Mohali, Ponting was beaten in the first innings by an inswinger that had him leg before wicket on the back foot, and in the second he was bowled between bat and pad by an unplayable off cutter that uprooted his off stump.
"This game, the ball he got me with in the second innings is going to get me out 95 times out of 100 I think," Ponting said.
"There's not much I can do about that and the ball in the first innings was fairly similar.
"He's using the swinging ball very well. He's unusual with the angles he creates as well as a fast bowler.
"There's not many quicks that you face around the world that swing the ball back into the right-handed batsman, so he's posing challenges for us there, and that's three innings in a row he's got me out."
Ponting said he knew how Sharma was trying to get him, by moving the ball into him at pace and gaining the sort of bounce only available to a bowler of considerable height. But he is yet to find a way of countering this.
"All our batsmen just need to think about ways that we can make it more difficult for them, and that's all you can do as a batsman sometimes," Ponting said.
"You identify when a bowler's having a good trot against you and you've got to find ways to combat what they're doing and that's what international cricket is all about.
"My challenge over the next few days now is to look at some of the vision - I know the ways he's trying to get me out but I've got to find a way to combat them."
