Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting a mentoring double act for Australia
Steve Waugh has flown to Manchester to rejoin the Australian team on the eve of the crucial fourth Ashes Test at Old Trafford.
Steve Waugh has flown to Manchester to rejoin the Australian team on the eve of the crucial fourth Ashes Test at Old Trafford.
He will join forces with Ricky Ponting to provide support to old mate Justin Langer as the side attempts to fight back from the devastating loss at Headingley.
Waugh played a mentoring role with the team in the first two matches of the series, as Ponting did during the World Cup. Ponting is in town for the last three Tests commentating with Sky, but has also been offering casual support to head coach Langer.
Waugh walked away from cricket when he retired in 2004. Ponting has never been too far away but has not been lured back into a coaching role, despite years of trying from the likes of Pat Howard and more recently Langer.
Ponting is understood to have been on the verge of taking the T20 role leading into the World Cup from Darren Lehmann when the world was turned upside down by the events in Cape Town and Langer came on board.
Waugh came back to cricket to mentor the side for the first two games of the Ashes series and looked like a man reunited with his oldest friend. The former captain liked it so much he wanted to keep doing it.
“He was supposed to come until the end of the second Test but he enjoyed it so much and we saw such great value in having him here,” Langer said.
“We asked him to stay for the third Test but he had to go back for a function, he was actually going to fly there, do the function and fly back the next day. That’s how much he is enjoying it.
“Guys like Punter and Steve Waugh, not only do they have a great presence in the group but they are great psychologists, they’ve been in the cauldron before, they’ve seen it all, so to have those type of guys, we are talking about developing leadership in Australian cricket, to have our guys to learn from people of that calibre is very important short term, but longer term there is huge value in that.
“He’s been like a kid at Christmas, to come back after such a long time away from the game, his passion and enthusiasm for the game has been brilliant.”
National cricket sides are in competition with broadcasters and T20 franchises to sign the best coaches. Ponting can earn more than $500,000 for a few months of work in the IPL.
Simon Katich, who has also been approached to join the Australian ranks, has opted for fly-in-fly-out roles with the IPL and The Hundred in England.
Waugh has a number of interests, including his own foundation, which would prevent him from taking a more regular role with the team. “I don’t think he’d do it fulltime, a bit like Punter they have so many other things in their life, but any time we can have them with the group … If you could have Punter one day a year, you would have him because he has such an impact on the group, same with Tugga (Waugh),” Langer said. “We are setting up this mentoring system where we have these great players coming in and being with the guys.
“It’s unsustainable doing it fulltime, we are seeing that throughout coaching around the world really, but when we can have them, we will have them as much as we can.”
Langer said coaching was his “chosen profession”, which made it a different prospect for him.
The coach revealed he felt ill in the minutes after England pulled off a remarkable come-from-behind victory to level the series and rob Australia of the chance to secure the Ashes in the third Test.
“Everyone in that change room, probably a lot of Australians felt it, felt completely sick after that,” he admitted. “I actually felt physically sick after it, and when I went back to my room, I wasn’t sure whether to cry my eyes out or smash my hotel room. At that stage, when so much goes into something and for most people it’s just a game of cricket, but when so much goes into it, it means a lot.
“You do take it personally because I know how much work’s going into it. That was the biggest part of losing last week, that we felt we were so close and we let it slip. You never like to let opportunities slip in your life.”
Captain Tim Paine revealed in The Weekend Australian how he assembled the side in the rooms after the match to emphasise that they had only lost half-an-hour’s cricket and were still well-positioned in the series.
“That’s OK, we’ll make sure we learn from it, we’ll learn a lot of lessons from that, short term and long term, and hopefully we can do it better next time,” Langer said.
The players have appeared in good spirits since the loss, exploring the cafes of Leeds and now Manchester.
“I’ve learned a lot of lessons throughout my whole career and the last week of coaching has probably been one of the most challenging weeks of my coaching career after what happened at Leeds,” Langer said.
“That said, as challenging as it has been, it’s been awesome, I’ve loved this last week of coaching, because you can sit back and feel sorry for yourself, or put it under the carpet, or you can work out ways to make sure we are up for the first ball of the next Test match.
“That’s the part of dealing with 17 guys ... you have to find solutions for how we win the next Test match and that’s the exciting part of coaching.”
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