 Even as the Australian fans wonder what went wrong at the Ashes, and some
others bay for Ricky Ponting blood, the captain has come out and said that
he would be perfectly understanding if the Cricket Australia (CA) decided
to split the captaincy of the three formats of the game between him and his deputy
Michael Clarke.
Australia had lost the Ashes earlier this week, after a heavy loss at the Oval.
The captain has come in for a lot of criticism for not having played Stuart
Clark in the first three games of the series, and then having failed to
pick Nathan Hauritz in the fifth test match on a track that started spinning
from the very first day of the game.
Ponting became only the second captain in many decades to have lost two successive
series in England.
The captain said that if that is the way the people at the top thought, then
there is no reason why the captaincy could not be split between him and Clarke.
Ponting would then continue to lead the Aussie side for the test matches, whereas
Clarke would then be the skipper of the ODIs and the T20Is. Already, the Aussies
haven't had a great shorter format results going for them as well, having lost
both their ODI series against South Africa - home and away - and this
was followed up by them getting knocked away in the first round of the ICC World
T20 in England.
The calls for Ponting's head had been rife ever since he lost to India in India
and failed to beat the South Africans at home, but what had saved his day had
been the win against the Proteas away. With this Ashes loss, the calls have
become louder again, and it remains to be seen whether the Cricket Australia
decides to make changes at the top as desired.
Ponting has currently returned to Australia for a few days of break
ahead of a gruelling cricketing schedule in the season. Australia now plays
Scotland in an ODI, which will be followed by two T20Is and seven ODIs against
England. Australia will be led by Clarke in the T20Is and some of the ODIs,
before Ponting will return back to captain his team. Already the Aussie selectors
have signalled their intentions of building the T20 team by not selecting Michael
Hussey in their T20 side and it may not be far when Clarke takes over the
mantle of T20 captaincy,
Already Paul Collingwood leads the English team in the T20 version,
with Shahid Afridi doing the same for Pakistan.
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