Ponting must rethink his captaincy

Peter Roebuck writes in the Sydney Morning Herald that Ricky Ponting must rethink his approach to captaincy or Australia will lose to South Africa and England in the next nine months.

Ponting often seemed to be captaining by formula as opposed to instinct. In his younger days he had a strong grasp of the mood of a match and an urgent desire to intervene. He was a leader, urging his players along, suggesting ruses to his captain. Moreover, his ideas were often astute. As a batsman, too, he hooked and clipped and seized the initiative. His only weak point was a hot temper and a fondness for grog, a combination that periodically put him in strife.

Ponting confronted and corrected his wild ways, to his credit. He did not blame anyone except himself. From that moment, his rise was inevitable. Honesty and ambition command respect. In controlling his furies, he lost part of himself, a part he needs to recover or else his captaincy is doomed. Most particularly, he needs to restore his feel for the game, and put it alongside his sportsmanship.

Above all, he needs to lead his men away from the resentments of the Sydney Test, which was a disaster for Australian cricket. Ponting and his senior players pursued a case they could not win over an incident they had initiated thereby turning a sharp-tongued opponent into a national hero. An aspiring leader was described as " an unreliable witness".

Ricky Ponting’s players fought hard, but did not have the bowling resources required to trouble a strong batting order appreciating placid pitches [in India]. The imminent return of Andrew Symonds will put a bit of spark into the fielding and add aggression to the batting, but it will not add much penetration with the ball, writes Roebuck in the Witness.

Also in the Witness Ray White writes, "All that can be read into the Australians’ defeat by India is that they are still not easy to beat ... All that has happened is that the Australians have come back to the chasing pack that includes just three teams — India, clearly, England and South Africa."