'Not many players are there at the end winning games' - Ricky Ponting compares Ben Stokes and MS Dhoni's match-finishing abilities

Ben Stokes has been the star all-rounder for England's side, especially as a batter, and his 155-run knock in the Lord's Test was crucial. After his wicket, England's batting unit crumbled and Australia won the game easily. Stokes, as England's skipper, has performed well under pressure with the bat and former Australian skipper Ricky Ponting compared the left-handed batter's finishing abilities with Indian legend MS Dhoni. 

Ponting, while acknowledging the English skipper's second Test match innings at Ashes 2023, also remembered Stokes' knock in the 2019 Ashes. Stokes, with his 135 unbeaten run mark, chased down the target of 359 runs with one wicket in hand. That knock was crucial as England levelled the series by 1-1, however at the end of the fifth game the series was levelled 2-2. 

"I thought and everyone probably thought he could do it again because we've seen it happen before, but this was probably, slightly more runs that they were chasing (in 2019),” Ponting said on the latest episode of The ICC Review.

"In the back of everyone's minds, I think once it started playing out the way that it was and how many similarities there were to Headingley in 2019…Steve Smith dropped him…and he was dropped on 116 by Marcus Harris at Headingley, So those sort of ghosts of the past kept coming back out," he further added. 

First one that comes to mind is maybe someone like a Dhoni: Ponting

The 32-year-old has developed himself as a match-winner for the English side in all formats, and his ability with bat is astonishing, the left-handed batter scored an unbeaten 52 in the ICC T20 World Cup Final against Pakistan, and took his side home, while in the 2019 ODI World Cup, he notched up 98* and helped his side to lift the ODI World Cup. Speaking of his abilities, Ponting further stated:

“The first one that comes to mind is maybe someone like a Dhoni, who's 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's 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.”  

Stokes, with the failed last-match heroics and back-to-back losses in the first two of the five-match Test series, will be looking to win the third game at Headingley, where he played arguably the greatest knock of Ashes almost four years back. The third game will begin on Thursday, July 6.