SYDNEY – Ricky Ponting quit as Australia’s Test and one-day captain Tuesday, bowing to pressure after their World Cup exit, but said he hoped to extend his career as his country’s most prolific batsman. Ponting, 36, who led Australia in more than 300 Test and one-day matches, insisted there was no “tap on the shoulder” to step down and said he remained available for selection.
He endorsed deputy Michael Clarke as his successor. “I have thought long and hard about what Australian cricket needs. Now is the right time for the next captain to assume the responsibility for both the Test and one-day teams,” he told a press conference. Ponting is Australia’s most successful Test captain and their leading Test run-scorer, and lies second only to India’s Sachin Tendulkar on the all-time list of Test centurions.
But his record, straddling a transition period after the retirement of a host of greats, is tainted with three Ashes series defeats to England, along with occasional flashes of petulance. Ponting said last week’s World Cup quarter-final loss to India — ending their 12-year reign as champions — prompted his move, which also comes just three months after the latest Ashes loss brought strident calls for change.
“The fact that we went out of the World Cup when we did was the main reason,” he said, while denying he had been forced out by Cricket Australia. “I will go on the record and say that I have had no tap on the shoulder from anybody, this has been a decision that has been wholly and solely made by me.” Ponting added that he was excited by the prospect of being unburdened by the captaincy and rediscovering his world-beating batting form.
His fighting 104 in Thursday’s quarter-final was Ponting’s first hundred in 39 international innings across all formats. “Today is a new start for me and I am very excited about the future,” he said. “I will give my complete support to our new captain and continue to do my best to set the best possible example for my team-mates and emerging cricketers alike.
“I proved to myself the other day that I still have what it takes to play a good international innings and that was something that was really important to me.”
