By CricketCountry Staff
Ricky Ponting has refused to accept the perceptions of the Australian team as overpaid and lazy, and wants to see more of the detail of the Argus review after soaking its hurting revelations of the team's culture and skill under his reign as the skipper of the Test team.
Published: Aug 24, 2011, 12:58 PM (IST)
Edited: Aug 24, 2011, 12:58 PM (IST)
Ricky Ponting agreed that there was a big gap between the way Australia and England played their cricket © Getty Images
By CricketCountry Staff
Colombo: Aug 24, 2011
Ricky Ponting has refused to accept the perceptions of the Australian team as overpaid and lazy, and wants to see more of the detail of the Argus review after soaking its hurting revelations of the team’s culture and skill under his reign as the skipper of the Test team.
The review revealed that the Australian squad suffered from “the lack of a strong culture” within the squad and was the major factor in their slide from No. 1 in the world in 2008 to its current fifth.
“It is quite frank with the way guys [speaking to the review] have explained things,” Ponting said. “So I am keen to learn a bit more about what the perception is about the team or the culture within the team and find out what a lot of the facts are from the findings, talking specifically about the culture. The cold, hard facts are that we went from No. 1 to No. 5 and the Test series we’ve lost have been to the teams that were the No. 1 ranked teams in the world over the last three years.
“But it’s probably been more the way that we’ve lost, especially the last Ashes series; the way we lost some of those games was probably what was most disappointing to me. Because most of the other series we’ve played we were ultra-competitive other than a session here and there, but as you saw during the Ashes series there was a big gap between us and the way England played their cricket. As we’ve seen in the last couple of weeks as well there’s a big gap between the way England play their cricket compared to the way India are playing as well.”
Ponting felt that the drop in standards and talent in the country made it harder for the national team to succeed.
“I’ve been involved in a lot of teams and been involved in the Australian cricket team for a long time,” Ponting said. “My feeling on the culture thing is that the current group of players we’ve got, I think the perception is that they probably don’t work hard and they’re probably overpaid and all that sort of stuff. But I think this current group is probably the fittest bunch of athletes, and probably work harder than any other of the teams I’ve been a part of.
“The cold, hard facts are we haven’t won the games the other teams have won, and if we had I don’t think a lot of the negativity would have been around. But in saying that we’ve got to work out the reason why we lost games and why we’ve got players who probably aren’t as skilled as they need to be to become very good international cricketers, and that’s where the review will be very helpful for Australian cricket.”
