After England was unable to advance to the T20 World Cup 2024 finals, Matthew Mott announced his resignation as head coach of the white-ball squad. Many candidates have been floated for the position after his resignation, including Freddie Flintoff, Andy Flower, Kumar Sangakkara, and Ricky Ponting. Sangakkara has already stated that the ECB has not contacted him, and the rumours concerning Flintoff have subsided.
Ricky Ponting has now declared himself out of the running. The former captain of Australia reaffirmed that, at this time, he is not interested in accepting any overseas offers.
The 49-year-old is free to sign with a full-time team, but he has TV employment and wants to spend more time at home, so he won’t be accepting any offers from abroad. He recently parted ways with the Delhi Capitals.
The former cricket player added that it would be strange for him to coach England because he is Australian. In the end, he told ECB to remove his name from the list if it was on it.
Actually, I wouldn’t even think about doing it. It is well documented that I am not at all happy with my current international employment because it requires a significant amount of time away from home. In the most recent ICC review episode, Ponting stated, “I’ve got other commitments as well, with my TV work and things that I do and also trying to balance that out with having a decent amount of home time, which I haven’t had much of the last couple of years anyway.”
“Coaching other international teams is one thing, but coaching England for an Australian is certainly something different. However, I have a bit more work coming up in the UK in the next few months, so for now, I think I have enough on my plate. I’ll go over and remark on some white-ball stuff that Australia has coming up, so no, right now if my name was on the list they could actually remove it, he continued.
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In the past, Ponting disclosed that he had been contacted by BCCI with an offer to assume leadership of the Indian team following Rahul Dravid’s term. The renowned cricket player turned down the invitation, though, since he had no interest in working abroad even back then.