Melbourne [Australia], February 26 : ICC Hall of famer Ricky Ponting believed that things are falling into place for Australia even without their trio of Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazelwood.
Speaking on The ICC Review, the former Australian captain was buoyed by the fact the Aussies' bowling brigade gained valuable tournament experience and were tested in the fashion that they were against England.
"That could be really good for a team going forward. I was a little bit worried. But even though they had some injuries, every time Australia puts a team on the park, you know they're going to be very competitive," Ponting said as quoted by the ICC.
"Winning a game like that when ... it might've been 75-25 probably in England's favour going into the second innings, to be able to pull off a win like that. That's the sort of thing at the start of a tournament that can do wonders for a team," the former Australian skipper added.
Australia kickstarted their ICC Champions Trophy 2025 campaign in the most record-breaking way possible, with a century from Josh Inglis and his partnerships with Alex Carey and Glenn Maxwell powering them to a successful chase of 352 runs with five wickets to spare against England at Lahore on Sunday.
This is the highest-ever run-chase in any ICC ODI event, outdoing Pakistan's 345 against Sri Lanka at the 2023 Men's Cricket World Cup, and the highest-ever total in ICC Champions Trophy history, outdoing England by a run in this aspect. This is also the second-highest ODI run chase by Australia and highest ODI run chase against England. On the Pakistan soil, this is the highest ODI run-chase ever.
Spencer Johnson, Nathan Ellis and Ben Dwarshuis are attempting to fill the giant shoes left by Cummins, Starc and Hazelwood, who are not playing in this tournament. And while Johnson and Ellis went wicketless against the English, copping a combined 105/0 from 17 overs, Dwarshuis took 3/66 from his 10 overs.
Ponting also paid tribute to Josh Inglis, whose whopping 120* from 86 balls helped steer Australia's successful run chase.
"Inglis was absolutely magnificent. He's now made a hundred in every format for Australia, and he's made a Test hundred only a couple of weeks ago and then his first one-day hundred now. You talk about moments, well it doesn't ever become a bigger moment than that. That was a game on the line, the team needing him to stand up," he continued.
"The way that he went about it, the way that he went through the gears, the way that he was able to switch hit and hit powerfully to the leg side off the pace of Archer and Mark Wood. That was an unbelievable knock," the 50-year-old concluded.