New song for Rishabh Pant, Ponting's bold prediction about Pant and more - Cricket news today, 4 January 2019

Ricky Ponting makes a bold prediction about Rishabh Pant

Ricky Ponting

Former Australian captain Ricky Ponting has heaped praises on Indian wicketkeeper-batsman Rishabh Pant after the southpaw scored an unbeaten 159 in the fourth Test at SCG. Ponting has backed Pant to score more career Test centuries than veteran wicketkeeper-batsman MS Dhoni.

"He (Pant) is a real talent and an incredibly good ball striker. He has got a really good game sense as well, although sometimes the way he plays spin you wouldn’t think he has; but I have been lucky enough to coach him in Delhi, and he is a terrific T20 player and a clean striker. And he is already onto his second hundred and a couple of 90s to go with that. He is someone who can play a lot of cricket for India in all three formats", Ponting told cricket.com.au.

"We talk about Dhoni all the time and what impact he had on Indian cricket. He played a lot of Tests but has (scored) only six hundreds – this kid here (Pant) will make lot more Tests hundreds than that," Ponting added.

Dhoni has scored six hundreds and 33 fifties in his career while Pant has already scored two fifties and two centuries till date.