Former Australian cricketer Ricky Ponting reckons that Rohit Sharma can’t afford to throw his wicket away if he wishes to make a name for himself in Test cricket. The 33-year-old Sharma had gotten his eyes in, scoring 44 runs at a strike-rate in excess of 60 in the first innings of the fourth Test at The Gabba in Brisbane. His knock was laced with six fours.

But then he perished to Nathan Lyon while trying to go for a lofted shot, holing out to Mitchell Starc. It also brought to an end a promising-looking 49-run partnership between him and Cheteshwar Pujara. The shot drew a lot of criticism from a number of experts.

Ponting also came down hard on Rohit, saying that the Nagpur-born has to show a bit of responsibility. The veteran stated that the opening batsman fell prey to the trap set for him in the first place.

I’m sure Rohit Sharma would love to have his time over again: says Ponting

“It’s easy to say that’s the way he plays but you’ve got to be better than that,” Ponting was quoted as saying by Cricket Australia.

“If you want to be a really good, consistent Test match batsman you can’t just be going and throwing what could have been such promising innings away like he did,” he stated.

“He got to 44 comfortably, everything seemed to be hitting the middle of the bat, he just started to play some nice drives down the ground.”

“And the trap was set for him as well, that mid-on fieldsman was three-quarters of the way back, there was also a deep forward square leg, so what Rohit was thinking there we’ll never know. I’m sure Rohit would love to have his time over again,” Ponting added.

In the meantime, despite the backlash all around, Rohit said that he doesn’t have any regrets for playing the stroke against Lyon. He said that he prefers to take the attack to the opposition rather than going into his shell.

Rohit also understands how difficult it is to score runs against the current Australian bowling attack. Hence, he tried to figure out ways to score runs against them. In the last one and half years or so, Rohit has come up the ranks as a Test opener.