A new era of Indian cricket has begun with Team India’s victory over New Zealand in the first two games of the three-match T20I series.
Rohit Sharma has replaced Virat Kohli as T20I captain after the conclusion of the 2021 T20 World Cup 2021. Meanwhile, Rahul Dravid has taken the charge of head coach from Ravi Shastri as the latter’s tenure ended after the multi-team tournament.
While Dravid always seemed to be a strong contestant for the head coach position, but it looks like he was not the only choice in BCCI’s mind.
Speaking to The Grade Cricket podcast, former Australia skipper Ricky Ponting revealed that he was also approached by some people from BCCI for a head coach job and were ‘hell-bent’ on convincing him to take the offer. But Ponting declined due to personal reasons.
“…But [in this job] I am living in India for 300 days a year. Yeah, look I had a couple of conversations with some people during the IPL about it. You know the people I spoke to were pretty hell-bent on trying to find a way to make it work because the first thing I said was ‘I just can’t give up that time, it will mean I can’t coach in the IPL.
“I’ll have to give up [Channel 7] stuff in the summer, it just can’t work’. But it’s nice to have people thinking you might be able to do these big jobs but there’s a lot more to come with it than saying yes or no to a coaching gig,” said Pointing.
The Aussie have had a great time with Delhi Capitals as a head coach. The IPL franchise has worked extremely well under him and made it to the knockout stage on three occasions in the last four seasons. He is likely to continue his services for Delhi in the forthcoming IPL edition as well.
