Even as news that Ricky Ponting will be able to make himself available for the second season of IPL has sunk in, comes astounding news that his franchisee owners were looking to ‘dump’ him.
Ponting did not have a great IPL season in the inaugural year. However, at the price he was bought, he was a rather ‘cheap’ catch despite the talent.
But Kolkata Knight Riders, who spent a fortune securing Bangladesh’s Mashrafe Mortaza, apparently had little interest in retaining the Australian skipper for a second season in a row. The word on the street, the street of cricket business that is, is that Ponting was put up for sale, and the franchisee owners did speak to other fellow franchisees in the IPL to trade him. However, Ponting did not find takers in that aspect either.
While KKR are rubbishing the rumours stating it did not make financial sense, one of the reasons that there is little love apparently lost is because Ponting did not entirely share a comfortable relationship with the Knight Riders skipper Sourav Ganguly.
Ponting even went as far to state in his book Captain’s Diary 2008, “Sourav is very driven in the way he trains and prepares, a bloke who will get into a net and bat and bat and bat. There were a couple of times I was due to use his net straight after him but I was left standing there, waiting 20 or 30 minutes with my pads on, before I finally had my hit.”
According to Ponting, his advice on matters were not well taken, forcing Ganguly to send Ponting further from the in field and ideally manning the boundary ropes in many an instance.
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