There is absolutely no doubt over the fact that Ricky Ponting would go down among the greatest captains the game has ever seen. The former Australian captain was an absolute world beater who enjoyed colossal success as Australia’s man in charge for a long duration. In 77 Tests as captain, Ponting won 48 of those games, a tally secondly only to South Africa’s Graeme Smith.
However, there was one massive void in Ponting’s illustrious captaincy career. The legendary Tasmanian failed to win even a single match in India as the captain. As a leader, Ponting’s record in India was dismal, as he lost 5 out of the 7 games and drew 2, in 2008 at Bangalore at Delhi.
In 2004, when Australia last won a series in India, Ponting was agonisingly injured due to a fractured thumb, and Adam Gilchrist led the side in victorious causes at Bangalore and Nagpur. Ponting did return as the captain for the last Test in Mumbai, but that ended in a losing cause as Australia failed to chase 107 and were bowled out for 93.
“I got there in time for the third Test, which was the Test we won to win the series,” Ponting said. “I then came back and played the last Test, which we lost.”
“Yeah, I felt like I missed out by not being a player in the team, but we’d been building towards having that success there for quite a while,” Ponting said. “We had quite a set plan of how we wanted to do things in that series and it worked for us. “That was one of the great achievements of my playing time, for that group of players to go to India and win that series over there.”
“It goes to show that no matter what the conditions, if you execute what you can do really well, then you give yourself the best chance of winning,” he added. “And if you handle the pressure situations and pressure moments then sometimes that can be the difference not only to winning a Test match but winning an entire series and that’s what that team did well back in 2004.”