‘Have a sook’: Kane Cornes torches Ricky Ponting

Kane Cornes has taken a swipe at former Australian Test captain Ricky Ponting after drama erupted on Monday night.

Kane Cornes has taken a swipe at former Aussie Test captain Ricky Ponting.

The Port Adelaide great on Tuesday took issue with comments made by the Channel 7 commentator during the Perth Scorchers’ win over the Sydney Thunder on Monday night.

Ponting didn’t hold back in his assessment of the Sydney Showground pitch while watching on as Ashton Agar set a new BBL record among spinners with figures of 2/6 from his four overs.

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Most of the batters struggled to read the tricky pitch, however English imports Alex Hales (72) and Zak Crawley (58) appeared at home in a match where the hosts were restricted to 8/137 before the Scorchers chased the total down with five balls to spare.

Ponting described the deck as “substandard”.

Cornes has now reached deep into his bag of hot takes and taken a public shot at the World Cup-winning Aussie captain.

“How precious are we getting? This is getting so predictable and it’s getting so boring,” the the AFL premiership winner said on SEN Breakfast.

He said the Melbourne Stars’ blasting win over the Adelaide Strikers on New Year’s Eve where 416 runs were scored was a less enjoyable spectacle than the sight of batsmen struggling in Monday night’s BBL contest.

“I found it incredibly repetitive, incredibly boring and not a challenge,” he said.

Kane Cornes and Ricky Ponting.

“Last night the Perth Scorchers made 140 and the Sydney Thunder 137. This is a great contest and we’re seeing something different. It wasn’t as if both teams were bowled out for 40. Alex Hales, the pitch was fine for him. He made 72 off of 55.

“We have become so conditioned to flat pitches, massive bats and short boundaries and balls that do nothing and balls that clear the rope. I would much rather see a game like last night.

“But that’s not going to happen because, the curator next time will say, ‘You know what, the next time I’m going to make conditions a little big more friendly for the bowler’, he’s going to have Ricky Ponting ringing in his ears.

“He’ll say, ‘No I better not do that. Punter’s going to be on international TV, the most renowned commentator that we’ve got and he’s going to smash me for doing something different, even though there’s been challenges preparing the pitch.

“I think it’s s joke and I think cricket’s become far too boring. Maybe it’s one of the reasons it is boring and particularly at Test level and do we need to even things up?”

In a discussion with co-host Sam Edmund, Cornes went on to say: “I think people want a contest and they don’t want bowlers to be obsolete.

“Let’s just make the bats bigger, bring the boundaries in, make the pitches flat because Punter is going to sook about it. C’mon how precious is that.”

Ashton Agar (second from right) and the Scorchers celebrate another wicket. (Photo by Matt King/Getty Images)

Ponting had plenty of reasons to share hid disappointment with the conditions in Sydney.

“I just think the wicket that we’re seeing tonight is substandard for BBL. Simple as that,” Ponting told Channel 7.

“The problem I’ve got with it is, the Sydney Thunder have been a struggling team, I think it’s fair to say that.

“How are you going to attract young players from around Australia, or even overseas players, to come and play at your club if they’re going to be batting on a wicket like that?

“That’s the concern I’ve got. It’s always been a really inconsistent surface.”

Agar made full use of the inconsistent bounce, bowling 18 dot balls and six singles in a match-defining spell.

The left-arm tweaker completed the run out of Tom Kohler-Cadmore (27) then bowled Matthew Gilkes for a duck three balls later to spark a Thunder collapse that they never recovered from.

The Scorchers’ former left-arm quick Mitchell Johnson is the only bowler to concede fewer runs from four full overs when taking 3-3 against the Melbourne Stars in 2017.

Agar matched Adam Milne as next best with six runs from his four overs, although the New Zealand pacer only claimed one scalp for the Thunder against the Adelaide Strikers in 2021.

Cornes, meanwhile, recently also took a swipe at Australian tennis star Nick Kyrgios, describing the former Wimbledon finalist as “probably the greatest waste of talent that we’ve ever seen”.

Originally published as ‘Have a sook’: Kane Cornes torches Ricky Ponting