Former Australian skipper Ricky Ponting has voiced a scathing assessment on the health of the Sheffield Shield –country’s First-Class competition, saying the tournament is not producing Test-standard players.

Ponting, who is considered as one of Australia’s best Test batsmen, further went on to express his concern over the Sheffield Shield’s inability to produce Test-level batsmen.

Ponting told SEN on Friday (November 9), “You have to question whether the grassroots system is actually working in Australia or not. I’m not sure Shield matches are doing that well, to be honest.”

The Aussie great further added on the same, “We don’t seem to be producing the level of players that we produced for the past 30-40 years. You look at some of the stats of what our Shield players are doing and it’s probably nowhere near where they need to be to have success at Test level.”

However, there was a glimmer of hope recently in the tournament, as young batting guns Jack Edwards and Jason Sangha hammered twin tons for New South Wales, but Ponting thinks there is still a long way to go as Australia is looking to recover from a dark period in the game at the moment.

Ponting signed off by saying, “I think a board and strong leadership around all of the Australian cricket needs to address these issues and then hopefully things start to turn around.”

(With SEN Inputs)