ICC Cricket World Cup 2019: Ricky Ponting says Australia opener David Warner 'not quite up to match sharpness' despite unbeaten knock against Afghanistan

Melbourne: Despite David Warner playing an unbeaten knock of 89 runs against Afghanistan to help his side register a seven-wicket victory over Afghanistan, team’s assistant coach Ricky Ponting is of the opinion that it was not the best from Warner. “He struggled a bit early on. You can see he’s not quite up to match sharpness yet,” Cricket.com.au quoted Ponting as saying. [caption id=“attachment_6743831” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] David Warner played an unbeaten knock of 89 against Afghanistan. Reuters[/caption] “We’ve done a lot of work in the nets over the last couple of weeks, but he missed one of the practice games with that little niggle he had, so it took him a little bit of time to get going,” he added. However, Ponting feels that the more time he spent on the field; it gave him enough time to settle and play more fluently. “I thought the longer his innings went on, he started to look a little bit more fluent. Fantastic for him to get that sort of time in his first international game back. So far, so good with him,” Ponting said. Along with Warner, Steve Smith made his comeback in the team. Although Smith failed to leave a mark in the match, he did smash a century in the first World Cup warm-up match against the hosts England. Talking about both Warner and Smith, Ponting said: “We all know he’s a pretty determined young man. Him and Steven coming back in today, they were both keen to not just impress, but also impose themselves on the tournament.” Smith and Warner both faced boos from the crowd during their warm-up games. But the two times World Cup-winning captain looked this thing in a positive way as he said that only ‘best players’ get booed. “It’s not a huge crowd here today by any means and probably not a lot of Aussie support either. But when the bigger games come around, I think it will be a whole lot worse than that,” he said. “The few series I had over here, you can take it as a bit of a compliment as well - they don’t boo the worst players, they boo the best players in each team,” Ponting added. Australia will now face West Indies for their next World Cup game on 6 June. For all the latest news, opinions and analysis from ICC Cricket World Cup 2019, click here