Former Australia captain Ricky Ponting has expressed surprised at Rahul Dravid’s decision to take over as the head coach of the Indian team considering that he has a young family. Dravid’s coaching stint with the Indian team began with the first T20I of the three-match series against New Zealand in Jaipur on Wednesday. India won the match by five wickets following a mini-stutter.
Ponting also revealed that he too was approached for the role of head coach of the Indian team but turned it down. Punter explained, “I had a couple of conversations with some people during the IPL about it. The people I spoke to were pretty hell-bent to find a way to make it work. The first thing I said was that I can’t give that much time, that means I can’t coach in the IPL.”
Ponting is currently the head coach of the Indian Premier League (IPL) franchise Delhi Capitals. The Australian legend further said that, according to him, Delhi were the best team in IPL 2021 even though Chennai Super Kings (CSK) won the competition.
He said DC lost because they couldn’t win the big moments. Ponting elaborated, “I said this to the boys at the end that I still think we were the best team in the tournament. As good as Chennai were, they went on to win it again. But, I think we were the best team. We just made a couple of critical mistakes at crucial moments at the end, which is the difference between winning and losing in T20.”
Delhi topped the points table after the group stage but crashed out of IPL 2021 by losing both the qualifiers.
–By A Cricket Correspondent
