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Mark Taylor Bats For Puckovski Says He Is Ready For The Big Challenge

Mark Taylor bats for Puckovski, says he is ready for the big challenge

Former Australian captain Mark Taylor has backed emerging new talent Will Puckovski to play a big role in the Australia- India Test series. The 56-year-old said that instead of playing established opener Joe Burns, he would like to go ahead with a much younger but better-shaped batsman Puckovoski.

"I would play Will Pucovski and leave Joe Burns out. Burns averages 38 in Test cricket he's been a solid player for Australia without being a great one," he said on Channel 9's 'Sports Sunday'.

Calling him the batsman of the next decade, Taylor said, "Pucovski said he's ready - he's made two double hundreds. Pick him while he's in form. He has the potential to be a player for the next decade."

Praising his openness to his mental health issues, Taylor said that it shows how strong he is and that would get him places. "He's been open and honest about it from the word go that wouldn't have been easy. In the sides I played in it would have been seen as a sign of weakness now it's seen as a sign of strength," he said.

Batting at the top has helped the 22-year-old moustache man and the former Aussie also agrees to it. "I like the fact Victorian coach Chris Rodgers has had a word to him about batting at the top of the order. He's done that, made two double hundreds,” he said.

“His openness and his transparency with his mental health issues have really helped him, and I think has set a really good example for young sportspeople," Taylor added lauding Puckovoski.

The Victorian batsman has indeed been sensational as he has scored two successive double hundreds in three-inning and is the leading run-scorer of the Sheffield shield while Joe Burns has given awfully dismal performances averaging just about 12 having scored 57 runs in five innings.

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WTC: Finalists to be decided by percentage points, NZ fancies its chances

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Rahul Dravid backs Cricket's inclusion in Olympics

Indian legend Rahul Dravid has backed the idea of bringing cricket into Olympics for the expansion of the game into more and more countries. The batting maestro who also heads the National Cricket Academy in Bengaluru said that inclusion of the shortest version of the game -T20 in the Olympics will be great for the wellbeing of the game. "I think it would be great for the game if the T20 format can become an Olympic sport. There's cricket being played in so many countries. I'm certainly for the expansion of the T20 game," Dravid said at the virtual launch of a book named A New Innings by Manoj Badale and Simon Hughes. Dravid also acknowledged the complications the inclusion of cricket in Olympics will bring with it such as preparation of the pitch, finding window amid narrowing Future Tour Programme (FTP, but he was excited about the prospect of watching Cricket expanding into a wider global sport through Olympic games. He also made his assessment clear that cricket, unlike other sports, needs necessary playing conditions to be played and that the Indian Premier League turned out to be successful because of the nature of the pitches that were used which produced competitive cricket between the bat and the ball. Dravid’s assertions come at the back of a serious discussion ongoing between the International Cricket Council and its member boards on the issue of financial benefits that the inclusion of cricket will bring to the table for both the ICC and members. Last month, ICC sent out a questionnaire to its member boards to establish the ‘potential financial assistance they would receive from their respective governments and Olympic governing body in case of the inclusion of cricket in Olympics. A similar exercise was carried out a couple of years ago to estimate the benefits of taking cricket to Olympics but the idea was sent into cold storage as the Big Three’ boards such as the BCCI, ECB, and CA viewed the move that would cut into their bilateral series and other tournaments and ultimately deplete their sources of revenue.

Plane crashes 30 kilometres away from Indian team hotel in Sydney: Report

The India tour of Australia is yet to begin on the field but off-field instances of reckoning have started making headlines as a light plane has crashed at the Cromer Park, situated just 30 kilometres away from the Sydney Olympic Park where the Indian team are reading in their quarantine period. Reportedly, the engine of that plane had stopped working and it crashed at the Cromer Park around 4:30 PM on November 14. A senior Vice-president of the Cromer Cricket Club, Greg Rollins, said that after he saw the smokes coming from the plane, he thought of asking the players to get out of the field. He asked players to run off the ground and all followed the instructions to save themselves from the crash. "I yelled out to the guys in the shed, I just said run. They started running. The plane started to smoke and I thought we had to get these guys out. The plane looked like it was going to blow up. The victims were still conscious but they were ‘not in a good way’. One guy, his face wasn’t good. They hit hard enough to do a lot of damage but they’re alive, that’s the main thing,” Rollins was quoted as saying by stuff.co.nz. The Indian team had reached Sydney on Thursday, November 12 and after the players cleared the first round of COVID-19 testing, they have been allowed to train outdoors and prepare for the gruelling tour that will start from November 27.

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