Despite the fact that after the suspension of veterans like David Warner and Steve Smith, the Australian team is looking weak on paper, former Australian captain Ricky Ponting reckons that during India’s tour down under, the conditions will be playing a crucial role for the visitors apart from the hosts. 

Speaking on the sidelines of an event in Melbourne, Ponting denied the concerns that this will be one of the weakest Australian teams to face India and giving the visitors its best chance of a Test series win Down Under. He elaborated, “When India comes here we might have Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood back and that should help even though we will miss Warner and Smith at the top of the order. Most importantly, if the wickets help the pacers and the ball moves around, India will struggle. But if the wickets are flat like last summer during The Ashes, then India will be right in the equation.”

Commenting on the recent India England series, Ponting asserted tha experience of playing in home conditions helped England come through in a tightly contested series. He also said that because of the same reason it’s difficult to point out the actual mistakes of the Indian team as some of the matches were very close and could have gone either way. 

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One big positive for India from the England tour was Virat Kohli scoring 593 runs in the one place that was seen as a final frontier for him. Describing the same, Ricky said, “Comparisons are always hard to make at this point of Virat’s career. It is one thing to dominate international sport for a short period of time and it is another thing to do over 10-15 years and Sachin did it across formats.”

The former Australian skipper also came in support of Australia’s new coach Justin Langer and skipper Tim Paine to improve the image of the Australian team after the ball-tampering scandal incident earlier in South Africa.

However, Ponting also strongly defended against the perception that there was something wrong with the culture in the dressing room saying, “We know why this started. Nothing was said about it before South Africa. I was with the team since last summer with the T20 triangular series and one-dayers in England. Our culture has always been very good and with Justin (Langer) and Tim Paine things will be vastly different going forward. We now have the right people in the right places.”