It was on his first Test tour of Sri Lanka, in 1999, that Ricky Ponting first harboured thoughts of captaincy. On his second, in 2004, he was the captain, commanding the team for the first time since Steve Waugh’s retirement. Seven years on and Ponting is back in the island nation for his first series since handing the job to Michael Clarke. He spoke to ESPNcricinfo about Sri Lanka, batting, and captaincy, among other things.
On the 1999 tour of Sri Lanka you played very well at No. 6, but you never enjoyed batting there?
It was always foreign to me, batting that far down the order. I’ve always been a top-order player, whether it was junior cricket or state cricket, I was always in the top three or four. So when I first got a crack in the Australian team it was difficult batting down there, and more difficult when you played in conditions like here or India, where you’re starting against spin the majority of the time or you’re starting against the reverse-swinging ball and things like that. But that was a good tour for me. I have a lot of good memories from that tour and the way that I played, I made a hundred in Colombo and made 90-odd in Kandy and 50-odd not out in the second innings as well.
That’s when Steve [Waugh] came out and said that I was the future of Australian cricket and that sort of thing, and that really got me thinking about leadership down the track. To have that success – I hadn’t had success in India before that and didn’t have any immediately after either, in similar conditions – to come here and play Murali as I did and score a few runs was certainly great for my confidence. source: /www.espncricinfo.com/
