Ricky Ponting has some blunt advice for veteran greats Steve Smith and Virat Kohli this summer – don’t do what he did.
In his final years at the top of world cricket, Ponting pushed harder and harder to rediscover his best, spending long hours in the nets, punishing himself with fitness training and setting a standard that left younger players exhausted.Still dominant at domestic level, Ponting found the mental hurdles of Test cricket became so great that they compelled him to retire in 2012.
“If I’d had my time again I’d have forgotten about all that stuff and just focused on watching the ball and scoring runs, and Smith and Kohli have enough good people around them to get things back on track pretty quickly. That’s the lesson I learned, and it’ll be interesting to see the mindset of Kohli and Smith this summer.”
“I still think they’ve got plenty of time to find their best,” Ponting said. “It might be Smudge’s time actually, after that experiment up the top. He’s back down in his more comfortable spot at No.4, which I was on record saying I don’t think he should have moved, it should have been an opener who played at that stage.“Joe Root is a great example of someone of similar age who has found a way towards the back end of his career to play better than he did for the front end of his career.
“I’ve never really been one for milestones, but to tick off 10,000 would be pretty cool,” Smith told this masthead. “There’s only a handful of players who’ve done it in the past, so it’d be pretty cool to join that group and get past that milestone, hopefully I can do it this summer.”at the Gabba in January, when he was made to look ungainly by a ball that moved a long way.
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