Ponting: 'I'm interested in Australia T20 job'
Ricky Ponting has said he would like become Australia’s permanent head coach in the Twenty20 format.
"I'm on record saying I'm interested in doing the Twenty20 job for Australia if it came up and I can make it fit in and work,” said the former Australian captain after being announced as one of three inductees to the Australian Cricket Hall of Fame. “There's a few things I just want to get ticked off from CA first as far as how my thoughts are on how we can become a better, more explosive, consistent team.”
Ponting has been working alongside current all-format head coach Darren Lehmann during Australia’s T20 tri-series against England and New Zealand, something he also did during the series against Sri Lanka in February 2017, and says discussions about him taking over have already begun in some form. "I know Cricket Australia are looking down that path,” he said. “I've been talking to CA for a little while about succession planning with coaching in the shorter forms of the game."
He thinks that Australia’s struggles in their recent ODI series against England bolster the case for splitting approaches in different formats. "CA have done a great job making sure Darren's had a series off here and there just to keep him fresh,” he said. “The hard thing, you look at what's just happened in the last one-day series, put all the eggs in one basket and get prepared for an Ashes series for so long and nail that, and then before you know it the one-dayers are upon you and we're taking a similar group of players into that, that are probably a little bit tired and jaded and just having achieved something pretty special.
“England go the other way with a fresh group and a whole new lot of bowlers and a different team and they achieve the result they achieved. The planning side of it as well is one thing that has to be given the right amount of time to make sure you've got the players and the planning done for each series as well as you can, and even having been around this group the last couple of weeks, how busy Darren and the coaches are is quite amazing, and that's only around the one form, not thinking about anything else.
"There are challenges there for players and there'll always be challenges there for coaches but it's probably inevitable that there will be different white-ball coaches to red-ball coaches as this game keeps developing.”
Australia haven’t achieved the same success in T20 cricket as they have in the other formats. They have never won an ICC World T20, or reached No.1 in the MRF Tyres ICC T20I rankings, and Ponting sees that as something Australia are keen to put right. "I'm sure they [CA] are doing everything in their power now to remain consistently the best team in the world in all three forms,” he said. “We've never reached that in the T20 side of things, we're the reigning World Cup 50-over champions and have just won the Ashes.”
Since his retirement, Ponting has been building his CV as a T20 coach, having been involved with Mumbai Indians in the Indian Premier League from 2014-16. He will coach the Delhi Daredevils in the upcoming IPL, and enjoys coaching in T20 cricket because it enables him to maintain a work-life balance.
"What I've tried to do and the way things have worked out the last five years is just be around the T20 game,” he said. “One thing I know where the tournaments are six or eight weeks maximum, I want to have as much family time as I can as well, that's really important for me not to be on the road as much as when I was playing, I've got three children now under the age of 10. I'll have some challenges there making it all work, as I have the last couple of weeks, my wife's starting to feel the pinch again, having me on the road a bit. But that's what I want to do and I really enjoy every moment of it.”
Ponting’s induction into the Australian Cricket Hall of Fame confirms his status as one of his country’s greatest-ever players, something he is very proud of. “Looking back now it's five years since I retired and it's gone pretty quickly, and here I am back in Australian colours again,” he said. “One thing us older guys now always ram home to the young guys coming in, just how privileged you are to be playing and make the most of every moment. I was only saying to Alex Carey in the game down in Hobart the other night that I played for 20-odd years and it felt like 20-odd minutes, so that's how quickly it goes. I was lucky to play in a great era of a lot of successful teams and a lot of great players, so some special memories for sure.”