'Hard to argue': Ponting reveals ‘overlooked’ factor in India’s T20 WC success

NEW DELHI: Former Australia skipper Ricky Ponting has praised the India nationalist cricket team aft their ascendant triumph successful the T20 World Cup 2026, calling the existent Indian broadside 1 of the strongest T20 teams ever. India secured their 3rd T20 World Cup rubric with a convincing 96-run triumph implicit the New Zealand nationalist cricket squad successful the last astatine the Narendra Modi Stadium successful Ahmedabad.

The triumph besides made India the archetypal squad to successfully support the T20 World Cup.

Ponting praises India’s extent and consistency

Ponting highlighted India’s awesome performances successful caller ICC tournaments and their beardown grounds successful white-ball cricket. According to him, the team’s operation of talent, acquisition and extent makes them highly hard to beat.“It’s truly hard to reason a constituent against that. If you look astatine this, not conscionable the T20I squad but their white-ball grounds successful ICC events implicit the past 5 oregon six years, it’s rather remarkable,” Ponting said connected International Cricket Council’s The ICC Review.

“A batch of radical astir apt identified earlier this tourney started the extent and the spot that this existent Indian squad had, and besides the acquisition that they have.“This is simply a very, precise beardown Indian white-ball team, not conscionable a T20 team. Back-to-back World Cups, hats disconnected to them.”

Experience and IPL influence

The erstwhile Australian skipper believes the players’ acquisition from some planetary cricket and the Indian Premier League has helped them grip unit situations better.

“The 1 happening that’s astir apt overlooked with this existent squad is the magnitude of acquisition and the magnitude of cricket a batch of these guys person played, whether it’s planetary cricket oregon adjacent conscionable the IPL,” said Ponting, who is besides caput manager of Punjab Kings.“The IPL games are each spot arsenic large arsenic planetary games anyway, truthful this Indian squad came successful good primed with large equilibrium and a large squad.”

Learning from a uncommon defeat

India had suffered a decision against the South Africa nationalist cricket squad during the Super Eight stage, but Ponting felt the nonaccomplishment really helped the squad refocus.“You triumph 12 matches connected the trot, there’s bound to beryllium an disconnected day. And I americium gladsome it’s travel early. It mightiness conscionable beryllium the shake-up India needed,” helium said. “They would person learned from that acquisition and won’t instrumentality things for granted.”After that loss, India bounced backmost powerfully with almighty batting displays, scoring implicit 250 runs successful 3 matches, including the semifinal and the final.“Maybe it conscionable allowed them to regroup, get unneurotic and speech astir the things that are important to them arsenic a team,” Ponting added. “They solidified what they felt was their strongest playing XI and didn’t marque galore changes astatine the backmost extremity of the tournament.”