Ricky Ponting of Punjab Kings during the IPL 2025 match against Lucknow Super Giants. (Photo: Sportzpics for IPL)Ricky Ponting is one of Australia’s greatest captains, with his leadership skills now translating into his coaching roles as well. But the genesis of a lot of his leadership principles came from the debacle at the Ashes in 2005 that Australia suffered with Ponting being at the helm of the team.
Now in a podcast, Ponting has revealed how that Ashes defeat shaped his leadership philosophy. He called that tour of 2005 to England as the “lowest point of his playing or captaincy career”. This despite the Australian team of 2005 travelling to England having the likes of Adam Gilchrist, Matthew Hayden, Justin Langer, Michael Clarke, Damien Martyn, Glenn McGrath, Shane Warne, Brett Lee and Jason Gillespie besides Ponting at the helm. England sealed the series by a 2-1 margin.
“That Ashes series was the lowest point of my playing career and, probably captaincy too. We got stung back into action basically for the 2006-07 series after that 2005 tour,” Ponting said in a recent episode of a podcast called Straight Talk with Mark Bouris.
So what wrong for Australia at that 2005 Ashes?
“Some of those sort of older names, like Matty Hayden, didn’t want to be at training for five hours three days in a row leading into a Test. For all the right reasons. So even we tried to sort of structure our training and preparation in a way that meant that some of these older guys (would be happy). They just wanted to be more mentally fresh rather than being there for the slog of it. An Ashes tour is hard work,” Ponting said. “Australian cricket team’s old way of training was everyone there together at the same time. Openers pad up first and you’re facing McGrath and Lee in the nets with the new balls. It got to the stage where some of our guys didn’t want to do it that way. They wanted to be able to tailor their training for exactly what they needed rather than the old school way.”
Ponting then said that he and coach John Buchanan were happy to “accommodate” these senior guys to hopefully get the best out of them. But there were little fractures that were exploited by the hosts. He then went on to specify his leadership philosophy.
“Just the little fractures of having the group not together all the time. We had certain individuals — which I won’t name — that didn’t stay in the team hotel in certain venues because they had their family there. So they were staying in other accommodation and little things like that when in the middle of an Ashes tour when the whole country of the UK is trying to pull you apart any way possible. The media and everyone in the public are trying to pick any little gap that they can or just a weakness. And we just had these few little cracks that were there that when you get put under pressure in an Ashes tour, then those cracks just widen up and become a little bit bigger. The great learning for me on that Ashes tour as a young captain — I’d only been in the job for about 18 months —
was that these these things that were sort of happening were with some of my more experienced players in the side
and as a young captain I was thinking that they’ll work it out and they’ll fix it. But guess what? They didn’t. Then the extra week that I waited could have been the difference between winning and not winning that series. So from that moment on, and you talk about leadership, it was literally (making a move early). I’ve got a good feel for the game and I’ve got a good feel for the team and for when people are going well and not going well. From that moment on, anytime that I identified anything that wasn’t exactly perfect or didn’t quite sit well with me, then I addressed it and fixed it on the spot.”
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