#218: Ricky Ponting on the Ashes, Pat Cummins, Indian cricket & stories you’ve never heard before

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ready Ponty, welcome mate. Nice to be mate. It's pretty
pretty timely. I mean, like the ashes on at the moment,
like one one down, we've got another one coming up
a couple weeks a week so a week time.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
How you going, I'm going, well, it's yeah, as you say,
it's good timing for me to come in and talk
about cricket wine.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Now we're going to do our wine. There's no cricket here.
This is where're talking about whine. That's my man, it's
good times, Christmas time. We don't talk about wine, and
we will talk about wine. We'll move on to that.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
But I mean, it's a good time. You know, there's
two things in the world. I don't know a little
bit about. One's cricket and one's wine. You're going to
ask me anything else today, don't really bother me.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
And that that's pretty good actually. But by the way,
we've got to be experience something. It's a funny thing.
I've always I thought about you and as a kid,
like everyone, as a kid in Australia at least, my
definitely my ear to play cricket and you always I
was never a good cricketer, but like you, looked at
the good cricketers in your side like I might play
the same always called Graham Hughes, if you remember Graham Hughes,
And there was something about their face that I used

(00:55):
to notice when I was a kid, and I'm just
looking at you noticing the same thing. There's something about
out and I don't know how sort of deep into
this you've observed, but cricketers have eyes. Their eyes are
usually a little closer together and look very straight to me,
do you think that there is actually a physiological trait

(01:16):
that makes a cricketer.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
You've actually heard this the last couple of years, and
I've never really, I've never heard of it, never even
thought about it before.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
And I obviously not as.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
Not as sharp as you're picking those things up, because
I've never noticed it around anyone that I'd ever played.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
But it came up a couple years ago about.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
Martins Lavishane, actually about him when he sort of was
having that really good run when he came into the
Aussie team. Someone mentioned something about it then, but I've
never heard of it or thought of it. I mean,
the only thing I ever get talked about with my
eyes is that they're a little bit squintier than most.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
When you smile, we're up there together. We might have
some sort of genetic connection with that. That's bad it
I can't play cricket. But and it was more batsman
and fielders. They have this ability to have because their
eyes have sort of set me close together. I don't
mean close together, but like they're not spread across their
head like some other people, that they have this ability
to really focus on the board. I mean, I've often wondered,

(02:11):
what's someone like you who's reached the highest levels in cricket,
what's someone like you thinks about the physical characteristics that
makes a great cricketer.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
It's the interesting point going back about the eye.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
Think.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
At the back end of my career, we did a
study up in Brisbane actually Queensland University was doing a
study on what made the really good international player better
than the really good great player and it was all
about it was all about their eyes and how we
tracked and watched the ball. You know, did we watch
did the best players watch the ball longer? Did they
watch the ball differently? You know, what did they do?
So we had these sort of glasses and reflectors and

(02:45):
everything that were set up to and we're on a
bowling machine, and these these glasses actually picked up every
slight little movement of your eyes, so how you're watching
the ball, and all of us did a little bit
differently to be honest, like someone like Mike Cussy and
Justin Langer watched the ball after on to the bat
and after impact. The big thing that showed up with
me was that I only looked at I only looked
at the bottom five percent of the ball, so when

(03:06):
the ball was coming down the wicket, not the whole ball,
not the whole ball. No, So my actual focus point
was on the bottom five percent of the ball, which
was different than what everyone else did as well. But
when you think, when you start breaking things down like that,
it actually sort of rung a bit of a bell
with me as to why I could do certain things
in the game that the other players probably weren't quite
as good at. So if you think about through my career,
I was probably able to pick length up quicker than

(03:29):
most as a batsman meeting the ball. Yeah, length of
the ball so where it was pitching, and I was
able to play pull shots to balls that were a
little bit fuller than others.

Speaker 1 (03:37):
And then when I thought about that.

Speaker 2 (03:38):
Maybe that was because I was I was actually looking
at the part of the ball that was actually hitting
the wicket first. So if you're looking at the top
of the ball, obviously there's going to be longer before
you can pick up which when the ball is actually
landing on the wicket. So that might have been one
thing to learned. The other thing when you mentioned it
then about about batting and catching, So I always when
I was fielding in the slips, I always cooked with
my fingers pointing to the sky, which was unusual. A

(04:00):
lot of most other slip fielders would catch with their
fingers pointing down. And then when I started thinking about that,
I think that was probably because if I was only
ever looking at the bottom of the ball, the majority
of the ball was always above my eyes and it
made it easier to.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
Catch that way than this way.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
So that's interesting, some really interesting things that I only learned,
probably when it was too late because it was the
last couple of years of my career.

Speaker 1 (04:22):
But because there's not about physicality because in terms of size,
for example, like because people like Andre Simonds giants and
we got everyone's there's great cricketers in all different size categories.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
You know, well, most of the great batters have all
been short, is that right? Yeah, Through the history of
the game, like Border, Gavascar, Tendulka Lahara, myself, a lot
of the batters have been under a lot under six
feet tall. So that also, I think, I think there's
something in that with picking up the length of the ball,
maybe a little bit quicker than what the bigger, taller

(04:55):
guys can. Now, the game has evolved the last you know,
fifteen years, with more and more tea twenty cricket being played,
so we've got we've got a lot of bigger, stronger
athletes now than we probably did. But yeah, you look
back through history, most of the batsmen have been pretty short.

Speaker 1 (05:09):
Because if I look at just by way of comparison,
if I just pick on rugby league for a second,
Ruby league's changed the physicality that players are much more athletic.
They're taller, they run quicker, they do everything better basically,
but it's became very athletic. Is cricket going on that
path was sort of staying at us traditional levels in

(05:30):
terms of the sorts of characteristics you're talking about now,
I think we I probably played in.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
A semi professional, professional and ultra professional era, to be honest.
So when I first started, things are pretty semi professional.
You know, we were the way that we trained and
prepared and even rehabbed, and that sort of thing was.

Speaker 1 (05:51):
What do you mean semi professional league a bit more chilled.

Speaker 2 (05:54):
Yeah, I mean the level of detail now that the
boys go into, like getting ready and getting prepared and
how many balls are that ball of training and the
workloads at they're on and you know, getting up.

Speaker 1 (06:03):
First in the morning and doing you'urine sample to make
sure that.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
You're that you're hydrated for the day and checking your
body weight at the end of every session that you
play and things like that, Like it's it's got to
a pretty pretty high point now professionalism, which wasn't there
when I was playing with Boonie. Let's put it that way.
We weren't doing those things back then. So yeah, it's
you know, and you look back, and so probably the
semi professional was probably the most most fun time to

(06:28):
play as well, where you could probably get away a
little bit more than you can well, we.

Speaker 1 (06:31):
Could all get away more stuff because it was there
was none of these things or fun exactly. Well, a
lot a lot less at risk. Maybe you got to
go back to your You're a kid from Tasmania when
you grew up Tasmania? Is that right? And mom and
dad both together at the time, brothers and sisters.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
A younger brother younger sister, both three years apart.

Speaker 1 (06:52):
Yep, So how does I mean you see icy parents today?
I'm my grandparents. I see my own kids doing it
with kids trying to kick a football to them or
give him a cricket bat, like you just come on,
hit the ball, Hit the ball? Was that Ricky Pointing's life?

Speaker 2 (07:07):
Like?

Speaker 1 (07:08):
Was he three years of age and someone hand him
acreekor a bat and dad started throwing a ball to you?

Speaker 2 (07:14):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (07:14):
When I say that, people will say, well what else
is there to do in Tazzy?

Speaker 2 (07:17):
Anyway, you can play cricket and suddy, you could play
foot in the winter and nothing else to do. But
now look I was I was born into a sporting family.
But dad was a very tung of the sportsman and
most sports that he played, you know, scratch golf for
at fourteen a great cricket at my club, played top
level lossy rules footy as well as a young Bok
and Tazzy and mum was a bit the same. Mum
played pretty high level badminton and a sport called vigoro,

(07:39):
which I think is actually played here in your South Wales.
It was like almost like a female version of cricket
a long time ago, with a different shape baton. Rather
than bowling at the two ballers actually threw the ball.

Speaker 1 (07:52):
So they both got a good eye hand coordination.

Speaker 2 (07:54):
Yeah. And my uncle played cricket for Australia, Greg Campbell
went on the eighty nine Ashes Tour.

Speaker 1 (07:59):
So your mum's side on mom's side, ya, that's interesting
in your mum's playing badminton. That that's sort of fairly
serious hand coordination. I wonder whether you've got if you
look at the facial features of yourself and your mum,
are you more look do you look more like your mum?
And facial features around here more and more? Like?

Speaker 2 (08:16):
Show you when we finish it. My dad almost identical. Really, Yeah,
it's unbelievable. People say it all the time. Yeah, I'll
show you some photos.

Speaker 1 (08:26):
So the old man used to throw a ball at
your mom.

Speaker 2 (08:28):
Yeah, And like any kid growing up, it was just
it was kids in the neighborhood, you know, kids that
around your sort of area that was similar sort of age,
or even for me because I was reasonably good at it.

Speaker 1 (08:39):
I guess I was always playing with a bigger boys.

Speaker 2 (08:41):
So any game that was happening anywhere I just wanted
to go and be a part of. So that was
cricket in the summer, and Ossie Rule was footy in
the winter time. And to be honest, I love I
love both of those games equally. In fact, I probably
enjoyed playing footy more than I did cricket when I
was a kid.

Speaker 1 (08:53):
There's a bit more of a if it's a team
aspect is the right side of it.

Speaker 2 (08:57):
But it just had a chance to be able to
let a little bit of steam off, bit of physicality
in footy that you could never sort of do.

Speaker 1 (09:02):
In cricket, and I have always enjoyed that. So would
you would? Would you have been one of those kids?
I'm mad you're speaking. I'm sort of having fine memories
of this, but one of those kids who there were
I don't know where you lived, but you live in Launceston.
Didn't you know it was a lame way at the
back or it was a park at there and you
had a garbage tin and a crapy old bat, or
you'd find whatever you could may do.

Speaker 2 (09:24):
Depending how big the game was. If it was just
me and my mum and dad and my brother would
just be in the backyard probably, but if there was
a game going on them there was a park just
down the bottom of the hill from where we lived
that you might have fifteen or twenty kids taken part
in aither either a taped up tennis ball game or
if one of us had a cricket ball, then it
be a cricket ball flying all.

Speaker 1 (09:40):
Over the place.

Speaker 2 (09:41):
So that was where I sort of, you know, learn
learned the game, learned the love for the game, and
everything started happening pretty quickly for me.

Speaker 1 (09:48):
After that.

Speaker 2 (09:49):
I was playing competitive cricket at grade five at school,
which was that was the earliest we could play back then.
There was no sort of eleven yeah, ten or eleven
probably yeah yeah. So you know, now there are all
sorts of junior programs. We can be playing competitive games
at seven, eight, nine years of age, but there was
none of that when I was growing up in Tazy.

Speaker 1 (10:08):
You had to wait until you had your school cricket.

Speaker 2 (10:09):
In grade five, and so I played grade five, grade six,
and then into junior comps and then that's where it
all started.

Speaker 1 (10:15):
Yeah, we were you were driven kids. Like the other day,
I had an opportunity to interview Mick Fanning and he
told me about his style of preparing for a World
Serven competition, and he goes into what he called cyborg mode.
Mode cyborg like, don't talk to anyone, I shut down,
I train, I sleep, et cetera. And he does it

(10:38):
like say, twelve weeks before an event, big event, completely
and utterly committed. Of course, once the event's over he
goes into another mode and has some fun. But is
Ricky Ponting was he as a young person or is
it something became more as you've got professor, more professional

(10:59):
as the game evolved. Were you always I want to
win this bloody thing and I'm going to be the
best on the field.

Speaker 2 (11:06):
Like the way I trained and prepared probably better and
harder than anyone that I over played with. That was
from a kid's age in this Sheffield Shield cricket as
a seventeen year old into the Australian team as a
twenty year old. I prided myself on working hard and
getting the most out of myself.

Speaker 1 (11:22):
And and the other side of that as well.

Speaker 2 (11:24):
Like I've always said this, you know, I eventually became
Tasmanian captain, eventually became Australian captain. But because I was
always I was always a young person in every team
that I played in, So leadership roles for me at
an early age didn't come because you know, I'm thirteen
and the under seventeens, and I'm fifteen in the under nineteens,
and I'm.

Speaker 1 (11:41):
Seventeen in the Tazzy team.

Speaker 2 (11:43):
But even though I was the youngest one, I always
try to set a great example because I thought I
thought I could bring something to a team, whether it
was skill wise, where it was energy wise, that that
would be able to make other people better. So I
was always I was always thinking along along those lines.
So and I think that's why eventually leadership ended up
sitting pretty well with me. I enjoyed that responsibility of

(12:03):
being a leader and it being my team and standing
up for my team. So preparation, I think it's different
with an individual sports so we're surfing like that, you
can do that right because no, you've got no one
else you need to worry about.

Speaker 1 (12:14):
But with a cricket team and shark had his issues.

Speaker 2 (12:18):
With those as well, which I don't know how he's
ever got back in the water as a result of that,
to be honest. But when you're in a team, you've
always got someone else to be thinking. There's always someone
that you want to work with or want to help out,
so you can't sort of just lock yourself away.

Speaker 1 (12:30):
It can be very disciplined with what you do with your.

Speaker 2 (12:31):
Own training and preparation, but you know you're turning up
to training with fifteen other guys for instance, on a
Nash's tour, and.

Speaker 1 (12:39):
Coaches and staff and everything.

Speaker 2 (12:41):
So it's much more of an inclusive environment around a
cricket team that it would be around an individual sport.

Speaker 1 (12:47):
You said you in your early stages, you wouldn't have
called yourself a leader, But sometimes if you see I
just remember in team sports anyway, and business for that
matter too, if I see a young person who is
maybe you don't as experience as everybody else and maybe
just normal talent, but if I see them really putting

(13:08):
in and others see them really putting in to some extent,
I think that is a form of leadership. They're leading
by example. I mean, was that something were you conscious
of that? Did you know that if I put in hard,
I'm you know, I'm fifteen when all the rest of
twenty or I'm twelve and all the rest of sixteen,
and whatever the case may be. If I work really hard,
I'm actually going to be sort of semi motivate the

(13:29):
rest of the guys around me. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (13:30):
Absolutely, But I was, Yeah, I was aware of it.
But I wasn't trying to impress anyone. No, No, it
was just too I was and what I wanted to
what I wanted to become, you know. So it was
it wasn't like I hope Steve Will watches me train
really hard today, or hope the coach has noticed that
I'm doing this. It was more about, as you say,
the energy and wanting to make my teammates better, because
at the end of the day, you're in a team.
If you can make if you can make your mates

(13:51):
around you a couple of percent better a day, when
you're already part of a good team, then the sky's
the limit on what you can achieve as a group.

Speaker 1 (13:57):
Right. So that was the attitude I always had.

Speaker 2 (13:59):
And then, as I said, eventually that the captaincy came
and then it went to another level.

Speaker 1 (14:02):
There where it was.

Speaker 2 (14:04):
You know, the older I got, the more that I played,
the more where I was of that example, you know
I was I was always the first one at breakfast
every morning. I was the first one on the training track.
I was the last one to leave the training track.
If there was someone that was struggling with their game,
then I stayed with him. Then that's three balls to
them for hours at the end of training. Because I
wanted to do that, not because I wanted someone to

(14:24):
see it. I wanted to make those guys in my
team the best that they could be. So when you
were in when you're in my team, or the way
I used to describe it, when you were in my tent,
then I was going to do whatever I could to
make sure that you were the best player that you
could be, and that you would stay in my tent
for as long as possible.

Speaker 1 (14:38):
That's really that's full leadership. I mean, no matter how
old ry, that is full leadership. Would would you like
of obviously have often reflected on yourself and we tended it,
especially if we get past fifty, which I've just picked over.
So it's just as again of the past fifty would
you say that Ricky pointing, particularly in these early years,

(15:00):
was more talent than hard work which was made successful.
Was he more hard work than talent than made he's successful?
What would you say is even because we see we
see Sam concas that like, how's that all worked? Like
because there's a big picture, you're just drawn it's not
just hard it was.

Speaker 2 (15:16):
I mean, no doubt I was born with my share
first share of natural talent. I mean, we'll go back
to those early days. So I played all of grade
five and all of grade six, all primary school cricket
two years in a row. Didn't get out once, Wow,
didn't get out once in fact, and then all of
year ten and all of your eleven. I think I
got out once in those two years ob senior crickets.

Speaker 1 (15:35):
I got run out.

Speaker 2 (15:36):
I got run out once, So I think all I
think it was the opposition coaches fight.

Speaker 1 (15:41):
I reckon I was in about this far.

Speaker 2 (15:42):
But it gave me run out and it gave me
run out anyway, So the talent was there for me.
And then with Dad, like I said, with Dad, like dad,
Dad was good at everything he did, sporting was, but
he would rather just turn up and do it with
his mates and have a few beers on a Friday
night and then have a few more beers at the
end of the game on a Saturday night. And there
was probably no career for him back then either. It

(16:02):
was just he just wanted to play.

Speaker 1 (16:04):
No money in it, yeah, because he was good at it.

Speaker 2 (16:06):
But when I came along, I think he saw a
fair bit of himself in me, and it was like, right,
I'm not going to let you waste it like I
potentially wasted it. And not to the point where he
ever pushed me in any way at all. I mean
he'd he'd be hard on me with certain things and
pretend he didn't know about how.

Speaker 1 (16:22):
Many runs I scored that day.

Speaker 2 (16:23):
And we'd get home at dinner and he'd say, oh,
how did you go today, And I'd say, oh, yeah, yeah, okay, Dad,
it went all right. My first ever game at junior
forty under thirteens, I was like eleven. I'd never played
once again, never played a competitive game of football before.
I must have had fifty kicks and kicked five goals
in my first ever junior game. I remember sitting around
the dinner table that night. Dad was there watching. He said,

(16:44):
I how'd you go today? So, oh, yeah, I kick
five goals and he said, well, what did you kick
six goals? Like it was probably the best part of
the greatest game of junior food he ever played. And
I still got the question why I didn't do that
little bit better?

Speaker 1 (16:57):
But see, he sort of he put goals in front
of me that yeah, I didn't really let it.

Speaker 2 (17:02):
Didn't set goals of what he wanted me to achieve,
but he just made it really clear that with the
talent that I had, that if I felt putting the
hard work, then good things would come.

Speaker 1 (17:12):
Basically.

Speaker 2 (17:12):
So it was always a pretty simple motto in our house.
If you're willing to put in, you'll get something back out.
If you're not willing to do the hard work, don't
expect anything to come.

Speaker 1 (17:20):
Back your way.

Speaker 2 (17:21):
So that was the way that I always lived and
trained and still do now. So it was pretty simple messaging,
but it hit the point.

Speaker 1 (17:29):
So you're talking about it being a team game, I
just want to go back to the two thousand and six,
two thousand and seven side, this train side. Obviously you
were the captain of it. The names in that team,
and I'm not reflecting on today's teams, but just the
names in a historical sense in that team were pretty amazing.

(17:52):
They were. But we just lost in O five.

Speaker 2 (17:54):
Yeah, so we just lost in England OH five, which
was the lowest point of my playing and probably Captaincy
career that that that series.

Speaker 1 (18:01):
It was was that the same side I reckon exactly identical.

Speaker 2 (18:05):
I don't think we made anyh No, we got back
Damien Martin might have been out of the side. Damien
Martin got dropped halfway through the six oh seven series and.

Speaker 1 (18:15):
Yeah, but otherwise it was also five. But you picked
up both six and seven. Well we had we had to.

Speaker 2 (18:20):
Like that was where Australian cricket and me and some
of those names that you're reading there, Well got.

Speaker 1 (18:24):
Adam Girl, Chris Matthew Hayden, Shane Warn, Justin Langer, Mark Clark,
Shame and Shane Warn. It goes on not bad.

Speaker 2 (18:32):
Well we got stung back into action basically after five
that five tour with some of those sort of older
names that you're mentioning there. Like we when we got
to the UK, for all the right reasons, we tried
to sort of structure our training and preparation in a
way that meant that some of these older guys Mattie
Hayden didn't want to be at training for five hours,
you know, three days in a row leading into and

(18:54):
stuff like that. I just just just wanted to be
more mentally fresh rather than being there the slog of
a you know, an ASHES tool is hard work.

Speaker 1 (19:01):
They take me through because what do you mean by that?

Speaker 2 (19:03):
Because well, back in like our Australian cricket team's old
way of training was everyone there together, everyone there at
the same time. Openers pad up first, you face the
McGrath lee, these guys in the nets with the new balls,
and it got to the stage where some of our
like some of our guys didn't want to do it
that way. They wanted to be able to tailor their
training for exactly what they needed rather than the old

(19:23):
school way.

Speaker 1 (19:24):
Right.

Speaker 2 (19:24):
So you know, John b Chan and I were for
all the right reasons, We're happy to try and accommodate
these guys to hopefully get the best.

Speaker 1 (19:31):
Out of them on that on that tour.

Speaker 2 (19:33):
Now it didn't work, so like just the little fractures
of having the group not together all the time. We
had certain individuals which I won't name, that that didn't
stay in the team hotel when certain Venia had their
family there, so they were staying in other accommodation and
little things like that when in the middle of a
NASHES tool, when the whole country in the UK is
trying to pull you apart anyway, media, everyone in the public,

(19:54):
they're trying to pick any little gap that they can, and.

Speaker 1 (19:56):
We're a weakness.

Speaker 2 (19:57):
Yeah, and we just had these few little cracks that
were there that when you get put under pressure in
an ASHES tour, then those cracks just widen up and
become a little bit bigger. So the great learning for
me and on that ASHES tour as a young captain
I'd only been in the job for about eighteen months,
was the guys that these things that were sort of
happening were some of my more experienced players in the side,

(20:20):
and as a young captain, I was just like, they'll
work it out, like they'll fix it, you know, but
guess what they didn't. And then the extra week that
I waited could have been the difference between winning and
not winning that series. So from that moment on, and
you talk about leadership, it was literally I've got a
good feel for the game and I've got a good
feel for team, and I've got a good feel for

(20:41):
when people are.

Speaker 1 (20:42):
Going well and not going well.

Speaker 2 (20:43):
And from that moment on, any time that I identified
anything that wasn't exactly perfect or didn't quite sit well
with me, then I addressed it and fixed it on
the spot.

Speaker 1 (20:53):
What's the interaction said between you and the coach and
the play? So how does that work? So you sound
like you're sort of playing a definite capbert more leadership
role but also nearly strategic.

Speaker 2 (21:03):
Well, the end of the day, the captain of a
cricket team is completely different than a captain of any
other team. The captain is basically the coach. Once the
game starts, the coach pretty much doesn't do much at all.
It's all over to the captain. So yeah, pretty much,
so the coach is more responsible for preparation, training times,
what we're going to do with training. How that works,

(21:25):
you can soult, Yeah, of course, yeah, I mean that's
a pretty important relationship captain coach of a national cricket team.
But that side of things was, you know, not left
up to me to handle those individuals. But it's my
team and they're you know, the guys that I'm interacting
with all the time I should have done it, and
and if I was guilty of one thing, it was

(21:46):
just it was I actually just trusted them to I
trusted them to get get it right and sorted out
more than I more than I probably should have.

Speaker 1 (21:53):
So from a leadership point of view, what would you
say to you, aspiring young captains, aspiring leaders in business,
et cetera. How do you balance up that end or
reconcile that bit between trusting my staff, trusting my team
which is your staff, and at the same time out
leading the organization to make sure that nothing goes astray.

Speaker 2 (22:13):
I mean, I think it's just I think it's just
a real gut field thing.

Speaker 1 (22:16):
I mean, don't get me wrong.

Speaker 2 (22:17):
Like you have to have full and out of trust
in all your all your stuff, who plays your team. Yeah, yeah,
you've got to have full trust in that.

Speaker 1 (22:25):
But I just had that.

Speaker 2 (22:27):
I knew that little things were wrong, and I didn't
I just didn't address them quick enough. So I think
when you've got that gut feel on what you know
makes and brings success, the moment that you feel that
that is not quite where it needs to be, you've
got to get back on track again. You got to
You've got to fix it quickly, especially you know in
international series, as I said, where the whole country is
trying to pull you apart if you don't, if you

(22:48):
just let it go a little bit longer than you're cooked.

Speaker 1 (22:50):
So it's sort of your you're going to be. You
and the coach are very strategic about how you start
before you start the game, like prep and all that
sort of stuff. But you're talking about being tactical now,
like every single day you notice something's going wrong here,
Notice this personal you might have an injury, or this
person of view is not walking very well. You're saying,
as leader of your organization, which is your team, you've
got to be very tactical. You got and speak about

(23:12):
it straight away. Do something. You can't just observe it.
Let it just no no drift by.

Speaker 2 (23:17):
Every day that goes by as a day loss that
you could have had a chance to fix something.

Speaker 1 (23:20):
Because you were pretty young. Then where do you pick
that sort of thinking up from or is it from
making the mistaken From making that mistake?

Speaker 2 (23:26):
You know five absolutely was Everything was fine before that.
I just you know, I was captain in two thousand
and three, we just won the World Cup, you know,
run defeated. Everything's going great on captain, the number one
Test team in the world.

Speaker 1 (23:36):
Everything's perfect.

Speaker 2 (23:37):
But that just the start of that one tour where
just a couple of little things opened up that I
didn't fix as well.

Speaker 1 (23:42):
I learned that really quickly and learned the hard way.

Speaker 2 (23:44):
Like I said, if it's the low point of my career,
then I learned the halfway right because we you know,
I had I was lucky enough to playing lots of
good teams and had lots of success and we didn't
have lots of down times. But that one hit home
pretty hard. And then it was from what Ey'd identified
and what we'd identified as a group we had about
I think England were back really quickly.

Speaker 1 (24:03):
It was only like a nine or ten month.

Speaker 2 (24:04):
Turn around before England were back in Australia, so we
had a chance over a short window to actually get
together as a group, get back onto the old school
Australian way of training and preparing and being together and
being hard nosed and given them nothing and treating with
great respect, but just giving them nothing. Outside of that,
We're had a well documented camp up in the SAS

(24:25):
Camp thing up in the bush in somewhere in northern Queensland,
which none of us even know where we went yet,
because we literally got on two buses that had the
windows completely blacked out and we just drove out into
the bush somewhere.

Speaker 1 (24:35):
When we got off, we didn't know where we were.

Speaker 2 (24:37):
We had a backpack, a pair of track pants and
a T shirt for a week in the bush and
that was that was us.

Speaker 1 (24:43):
They hardening you up.

Speaker 2 (24:44):
It was about breaking everyone down, breaking everyone down and
see how they reacted under pressure.

Speaker 1 (24:49):
Yeah, any surprises, No, No.

Speaker 2 (24:52):
There were ones there that I'm sure you're going to
even probably identify that weren't that happy to be there.
But a couple of leg spinners weren't that happy to
be there.

Speaker 1 (24:59):
Let's leave it at that. But mobile phone no nothing, mate,
that would have killed one of them.

Speaker 2 (25:05):
No nothing, No set meals and things like we we're
eating Campbell's soup out of a tin in the middle
of the bush at midnight style. It was completely that
like it was trying to break us down to the
point just to see get us at our lowest and
see how we would react under that pressure. And also
gave gave us a chance to sit down and be
pretty open open with each other as well as to

(25:26):
what we wanted to achieve going forward in that next
series coming up, but also as a group for the
next two or three years. And it wasn't we didn't
just have the players there. We had everyone there that
was going to be have direct contact with the Australian
cricket team and that was something that John Buchanan and
I wanted to be able to do together.

Speaker 1 (25:41):
Everyone involved in the.

Speaker 2 (25:42):
Team because it was in physios and to all the
direct staff that worked at Cricket Australia were all there
with us.

Speaker 1 (25:46):
Ye, So I mean my agree.

Speaker 2 (25:48):
I think we were broken up into groups that I
think eight or ten and I ended up having our
team manager who was probably sixty five at the time,
in our fielding coach, he was probably sixty at the time.

Speaker 1 (25:57):
In our group.

Speaker 2 (25:58):
The first exercise we had we had to walk single
file up about a three kilometer incline with the backpack
backpacks on, but we had jerry cans of twenty kilo
or twenty liter, so twenty kilos of water and we
had one of those each to get up and you
had to stay exactly one meter apart the whole way out.

Speaker 1 (26:15):
The minute anyone veered off, then it wasn't just your
group that had to go down.

Speaker 2 (26:19):
Everyone went down, start again, twenty push ups on the spot,
get back up and go again. So with those older guys,
I hadn't they couldn't even they couldn't get the Jerry
cans up there, So I ended up with I ended
up with two Simon cadish Is in my group ended
up with two.

Speaker 1 (26:33):
So we got forty kilo's.

Speaker 2 (26:34):
We carried up this three k incline, making sure that
we don't step five centimeters out of place.

Speaker 1 (26:39):
If we did, it was down.

Speaker 2 (26:41):
So its a lot of fun, No, it was for
the guys that were that way sort of inclined, it
was unbelievable, like to get a group together and share
some of that stuff all beat As hard as it was,
it was great. But what it did, it just it
just clicked the group back into would you call it
but cyborg mode what you called with Mick Fanning.

Speaker 1 (27:00):
That's what had happened with us.

Speaker 2 (27:01):
Like if I looked before that camp, if I looked
McGrath and Hayden and Gilly in the eye, you know,
at the back end of their career till after that camp,
I looked at them in the eye. They were just
different people. They were different beasts. They'd just gone into Right, Okay,
we're back on here.

Speaker 1 (27:14):
We've got this series.

Speaker 2 (27:15):
Coming up where we're going to show England and the
rest of the world just how good a cricket team
we are.

Speaker 1 (27:21):
And the rest is history.

Speaker 2 (27:22):
I mean, we beat them, We beat them five new
They didn't even they had a chance to win a game.
They had a chance to win a game in Adelaide
that they chose to not to try and win and
tried to play out for a draw, which played perfectly
into our hands. And from the moment that we won
that game, I knew that they couldn't win a game
on the entire tour.

Speaker 1 (27:38):
So you've got a reputation, definitely had a reputations being
fairly aggressive. Like hard mindset? How important is mindset relative
to just your physicality? Like you know, your mindset? How
is that? How important has that been to you in
forging your career as one of the greatest cricketers austral
has ever produced. Yeah, I mean my mindset and it'd

(28:00):
be pretty hard up bit of it. Yeah, and I'll
tell you why.

Speaker 2 (28:02):
So a bit of my background. You talked about where
I grew up. I lived in housing commission homes until
I was playing cricket for Australia. So I was going
away on a cricket tour, coming back and living in
a housing commission home. So you know, as a kid,
I didn't have a pair of cricket As a kid,
I didn't. I was borrowing my mum's shoes for cricket
at school in grade five.

Speaker 1 (28:18):
Wow, you know stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (28:21):
So once I got an opportunity, it was going to
take someone pretty tough to take it away from you.

Speaker 1 (28:27):
Fuck it, you're not letting that go. Yeah, So I'm
not yet.

Speaker 2 (28:30):
And you know, my whole the whole journey for me
was once I got picked in the Australian team, all
I basically said was I want to be a successful
part of a very successful cricket team. So I worked
along along that way, I worked to be the most
successful I could be, but also make sure the team
that I was in was the most successful it could
be with whatever I could do, skill wise, leadership wise,

(28:51):
mindset wise, whatever whatever I could And then and then
you can break that down even further.

Speaker 1 (28:55):
So as a as a batsman.

Speaker 2 (28:57):
You're in a one on one contest with the bowler, right,
the bowler standing up at end of his mark, he's
born one hundred and fifty k is either trying to
hurt you know, he's trying to get you out.

Speaker 1 (29:04):
Right.

Speaker 2 (29:05):
So the way that I used to look at that,
and this is you talk about mindset. It was like radio,
I'm here, you've got your ball, I got my bat.

Speaker 1 (29:12):
Let's go the best. Let's see your wins. Yeah, that's so.
I looked at it, and you're consciously wear that. That
that's all.

Speaker 2 (29:18):
That's how I got myself up for his game. Like
I never thought, like as a young bloke, I never
thought a bowler could ever get me out. It didn't
matter what they did, didn't matter hell well they bold,
how fast they bowled. I had no fear of getting
out at all. I was just going out of the
school to score runs.

Speaker 1 (29:32):
And that was it. Did it ever change? Is there
anyone particularly now?

Speaker 2 (29:36):
It changed the back end of my careers.

Speaker 1 (29:38):
Where it changed? Yeah, yeah, I love it. They're like,
well no, but it was not. It was where the
mindset changed, to be honest.

Speaker 2 (29:44):
Yeah, So the last two years when I stood down
from the captaincy and Michael Clarke took over the one
day captaincy and Test captaincy, and at that stage no
other captain that had stood down had kept playing. Normally,
if you stood down, you retired. But I I wanted
to stay around the Aussie team because I still when
I was still playing well enough. There was no one
in Australia that was going to not take my place.

(30:05):
But we had Warner and Smith and Hadden and Johnson
and Side, all these young boys coming in to the
Nathan Lyne, all these young guys coming in that I
wanted to be around and be a part of the
start of their journey like I had when I started.
I had Boone, Healley, Taylor to Wars, all these guys
around when I first started, and it was the ideal

(30:26):
introduction into the Istrail cricket team.

Speaker 1 (30:28):
So I wanted to be around for that.

Speaker 2 (30:29):
But what that meant was when I wasn't captain and
we talk about setting example, I went to it. I
just went too far with it, or I try to
be too perfect with I mean I was, I was fitter,
I was stronger, I was leaner. All the things that
I needed to do training was to play well physically physically,
But what I was also too worried about was, as

(30:49):
I said, being perfect and setting the perfect example. And
then I've just forgot how to score runs. That might
not make any sense to you, but when I was
just said before, every time I walked out the bat,
I had no fear of getting out. It was only
about scoring runs at the back end, trying to be perfect,
I was more worried about not getting out first than
scoring runs.

Speaker 1 (31:08):
It's a bit of as we get older, let's say
we you know, grow well for whatever the case may be,
we play more defensively. It's like we've got something to protect.
I mean in footy. You can't do it in an
afl autmobile. You can't protect the lead. You've got to
you know, being defensive. It's not a good idea. So
you're saying your mindset as you get older, was it
sounds like you're trying to protect lead or a little

(31:31):
bit more defensive. You're not as fearless, yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:35):
Or yeah, just more more more worried about getting out
first rather than scoring runs.

Speaker 1 (31:39):
Yeah, So that's exactly what happened.

Speaker 2 (31:41):
And then when you're thinking that way, guess what making
runs becomes bloody hard.

Speaker 1 (31:45):
So if you, if I do, want to just ask
you one quick question because it's I think as relevant
to some of the young kids coming through today, some
of the young players. When you're you talked about how
when you, let's say it in two thousand five, you're
in England, the media, everyone trying to put your pants
down and sort of you know, put pressure on you
wherever they can find weakness, put pressure on you. How

(32:06):
do you deal with the pressure of being a really
super talented young guy everyone has expectations of in a
cricket side. You know, let's say you're just now playing
for Australia or you're playing we're playing reps and you're
playing for Australia like your first year, your first year
at captaincy, how did you deal with the pressure of
the media. You're someone in the media today, so you

(32:27):
know how the media works. They're always they're looking for
a story, you know, and if Ricky Pointing doesn't want
to be the player that everyone thought he was, they're
going to give it to you. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (32:38):
I mean I I never gave them too much, to
be honest, and I talk the way I talk about
that now is when I was a player and as
a captain, it was like I have my helmet on
all the time. And now that I've retired, I've been
able to take my helmet off and there's a lot more,
you know, there's a lot more of me coming out,
whether it's in broadcast or I think people on the
public and the media probably starting to understand me more

(32:59):
now than they did I was playing. But that was
that was on purpose as well. I didn't want to
give too much away about me or my team. I
looked at myself as well as a as a guardian
of Australian cricket and a protector of my teammates. You know,
I looked as myself as a pretty much. When I
was captain, I thought of myself as a primary school teacher.
Like how would a primary school teacher look after their group?

Speaker 1 (33:21):
Right there?

Speaker 2 (33:23):
They're always there, they're there for them all the time.
They're putting their arm around and they give them a
pat in the back. They're not necessarily ruling with the
iron fist like the like the principal would it at
a prim primary school at sorry, at a high school,
a private school high school. Yeah, So that's the way
that I tried to protect and look after so if
it even if it wasn't me, like I didn't, I
didn't get a lot of negativity in the media because
of the way that I played, because I'd had reasonable success, right,

(33:44):
So there wasn't many times reasonable But yeah, so it
wasn't a lot where I had to go and sit
and talk about myself or answer questions about myself.

Speaker 1 (33:49):
But you're the captain of a team.

Speaker 2 (33:51):
That leadership five maybe some questions around that. But I
had all these other guys that I was answering questions
about all the time, and that's where the protector came in.

Speaker 1 (33:59):
That's for me.

Speaker 2 (33:59):
I didn't give much about I didn't say much about
any of them that once. I said, you know, they're
in my tent. I'm doing whatever.

Speaker 1 (34:05):
I came to look after them and protect them and
keep them in my tent.

Speaker 2 (34:08):
And they've ever got to the point where media were
unfair to my team or were unfair and factually incorrect
about any of my players, then they knew it. I went,
I went straight. I went, yeah, but not in I
just go to individuals and say, look, that's you're wrong,
and if you want to keep talking to us, so
you're going to keep talking to me in press conferences,
then why don't you talk to me first and asked

(34:28):
me first, rather than just planning stuff out there.

Speaker 1 (34:30):
That's not that's not right. So I had a.

Speaker 2 (34:33):
Pretty strict and strong relationship with the media, and now
I think a lot of those guys that I dealt
with then, if you ask them now, they would say,
who was that bloke fifteen years ago?

Speaker 1 (34:44):
Like he's totally different than No, that's right.

Speaker 2 (34:48):
Yeah, but I'm also going to yeah, and I'm not
I'm not looking I'm not looking after anyone. I'm not
protecting a group and a team, and you know the
other the other thing. Back then, I think we could
beat a lot of teams back then on the mystique
that was around that side. Everyone thought we were different.
Everyone thought we were different in everybody else and there's
something around that group and these this player does that
and he does that.

Speaker 1 (35:09):
Now, there wasn't.

Speaker 2 (35:10):
We were just good, but we were quiet. We didn't
let anyone in. No one knew anything about what we
were doing. You know, no one was in the No
one used to come in the dressing rooms. That we
might have three or four people in the dressing rooms
at the end of the test match, like I didn't
want anyone to know what we were what we were like.

Speaker 1 (35:25):
So it's interesting because I'm sitting here talking to you,
and the cameras probably a catching this, but I mean,
I'm trying to look at your personality and your character.
And I talked about your eyes a moment ago. For
the people who were listening to this, and or if
you're listening on you know, with some sort of audio
process and or not watching, I can tease them with
this guy seeing obviously now. So I want to make
some observations. So the first thing is you are for me,

(35:51):
you are really confident in what you got to say,
and you articulate it well. So I guess that's how
you were as a player too and a captain. But
you articulate with But what people don't would not be
picking out from these cameras. This guy's got a death stare.
You have a death stare. You don't blink too much
blinking now, but when you're speaking, when you are, when

(36:13):
you're delivering an answer, you know exactly what you want
to say. But the glare that's coming out of your
eyes is is confronting, like it's it's like you're looking
right through me. And do you realize you do that?
I mean you've probably have been told by Yeah, I.

Speaker 2 (36:36):
Don't know that I do it, but I've been told
in certain environments, have you got that look?

Speaker 1 (36:41):
Like you know you might? Even my dad's dad's got
the look we even like.

Speaker 2 (36:46):
My son's eleven, even around his junior cricket team, some
of the other dads are like, have you have you
got that look from him today?

Speaker 1 (36:53):
Where there is a look you have? Not when you're laughing,
your your eyes squeened up and I can't see what's
going on in there.

Speaker 2 (36:57):
But when you're what I'm talking about cricket and lead
ship and things, I'm pretty you know, I'm pretty passionate about.

Speaker 1 (37:03):
I engage me passionate it can you like for me?
This is dead set, serious, the deal. It's not just
I get the passion bit, but like it's real. Like
when you say I want to protect my site, my
job is to look after it looks like Bravehart. Shit, Yeah,
it's real. It's real, Like you you really want to

(37:23):
do it, you really actually really believe in it. Sounds
like it's fundamental. It's a fundamental to me, it's like
a non negotiable principle, like not something you're prepared to
move back and move away from. No, not at all.
And that's the way I've always lived. That's the way
I was brought up.

Speaker 2 (37:37):
You know, nothing's nothing's easy, nothing's taken for granted. You've
got the opportunity to make the most of it.

Speaker 1 (37:43):
Put your stamp on it. Let everyone know the way
it's going to be, and then remain that way. Remain yourself.
You can't.

Speaker 2 (37:49):
I've always been a big believer or not, but you
can't change who you are and go up and down
with the moments or with the times or with the
individuals like you have to let everyone know this is you,
this is the way it's going to be at the
end of the day. You know, I might give someone
a desk there, but that and that might be one
of my teammates, But that teammate has to understand that
the reason I'm doing that is because I'm trying to
make them better. It's not for any other reason.

Speaker 1 (38:10):
I don't I don't dislike it trying to dominate.

Speaker 2 (38:11):
You just know this, Yeah, this is this is the way.
This is the way that I'm delivering the message. This
is the way I think I can get the message
across to you, to you best. And even coaching in
the ip ON now I'm coaching probably five or six
different cultures in one one team environment. You know, you've
got probably fifteen eighteen Indians in your side, young Indian kids,
and you know that death there probably comes out with

(38:32):
them a lot of the time. But like I said
on my say, I'm going to have I'm gonna have
a one hundred conversations with you over the next two months.
You're going to enjoy ninety ninety five of them, but
there's going to be a few that you're not going
to enjoy that much. And that's but the reason I'm
doing it is because I'm making you better. That's that's
all I care about, is making you better, making our
team better, and giving us the chance to win as
many games as possible.

Speaker 1 (38:51):
Do you think they've grown up the way you did,
as you mentioned earlier in housing commissioned as a kid,
et cetera, and not being sort of overly spoilt, obviously
but clearly being loved by your parents, but not being
overly spoilt. Do you think that sort of builds a
certain honestly and authenticity and like something you I mean
as a principle, do you carry that through in your life?
Like fucking I'm going to be authentic, I'm going to
be honest because you know part of that those conversations

(39:13):
making you the best version of yourself talking to your
players or and or your teammates. That's about you actually
telling him what you honestly feel and like and then
you talk authentically. You don't you're not trying to bullshad anybody,
you know, Like I know people like this, like Kerry
Pack was like that. He was he actually wanted to
get the best version of you out out of you.

(39:33):
And he also had the same look and I haven't
met too many people have that look. He had that
same look. And do you do you build it as
a skill? Do you think or do you notice as
it no it's a skill or is there something that
you just naturally do? I think it was something that
was ingrained in me.

Speaker 2 (39:49):
I think you go back to my upbringing at home,
my cricket club upbringing environment was very much the same,
very hard ass upbringing in in my creit club, but
the same thing there had a lot of blokes that
were looking out for me and had my back. And
I think having had that as a kid, I think
I understand understood how good and loving that environment was,

(40:09):
and I made it wanted to make sure that that
was the way I was going to be going forward.
So I don't think it was ever anything. I don't
think it was a practiced thing. I just think that
I had great respect for being spoken to and looked
after in that way. That that's just who I turned
out to be. But also when I was, when I
was really young, you know, some of the some interviews
I did as a kid, I mean I couldn't put
two words together as a seventeen eighteen twenty year old

(40:31):
on many kin though, no and I couldn't, And looking
back now it was embarrassing on some of the interviews
I did as a young bloke. When I first got picked,
it was like God, I couldn't I couldn't even speak.
But that's all evolved, you know, it evolves step by step,
stage by stage.

Speaker 1 (40:45):
Maturity roles in teams.

Speaker 2 (40:48):
Having a voice to start with, I think once again,
as a young bloke, it didn't always have that voice,
and didn't want to. I just wanted to sit back
and listen and learn from what the great players and
great teams were doing, and then I could store all that.
I think that's probably been my greatest strength over time,
is the ability just to listen and take stuff in
and then get rid of all the ship and keep

(41:08):
the good stuff and then and be able to use
the good stuff where, where and when appropriate, around individuals
or around teams. So and if I'm talking about cricket,
I want people to know that I'm serious about it.
Like I'm not just there to captain the team to
have a bit of fun. I'm there to captain the
team to make you better and win games, simple as that.
And if if you're if you're not on the journey
with me, then I'll find someone else. So that and

(41:31):
you know, the when I took took over the captaincy
was like I'm taking over the best the best team
in the world. I want to make it different in
some way. I want to make what's inside the dressing
room a little bit different than than what it is.
I want us to play the same way on the field.
So you know, I came up with.

Speaker 1 (41:47):
A vision of what I wanted from from our team.

Speaker 2 (41:50):
I wanted the team to be the best skilled and
most uncompromising cricket team the world's ever.

Speaker 1 (41:54):
I love that. Not compromising, but yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:56):
Yeah, So with a vision, you need a set of
values to go with that, right, So how do I
get how do I create this this vision?

Speaker 1 (42:03):
How do I make this vision work?

Speaker 2 (42:04):
So then I said all the players down in a
group and we talked about the values and way, the
ways that we're going to live our lives and train
to give us the best chance of being that best
team in the world. And then the third part of
that was so I called it the three v's vision.
Values Validation. Validation was the third part. If you can't
validate it, you're not in my team.

Speaker 1 (42:24):
Sorry.

Speaker 2 (42:24):
But if you're not, you're not on the same track
as me, not in the same path as me. Then
we've got enough good players. I'll find someone else.

Speaker 1 (42:30):
So don't talk to talk, walk to walk like.

Speaker 2 (42:32):
We'll do both, only the way you're in with me.
This is the way we're doing it. Jump on board
and off we go, and we'll go and play and
we'll go and win.

Speaker 1 (42:39):
But we'll do it the right way. So there's okay.
So but you and you had the great skill and
you had a fairly hard assed team. They obviously they
played really well in six and seven and beyond. But
there's characters in your team too, absolute characters. And with
cricket there's cricketers. My my experience, cricketers they actually have

(43:01):
more fun than anybody that as athletes when a fun
time comes on. Actually some of the best fun time
people there are that there really are, and they love
a drink. They're just larigans, especially the train sides. Those
who I've known in your team, Warnie, like anything, how

(43:21):
did you I don't know even how to say this,
but and God rest yourself, but how do you manage
the character of someone like him who sounds like, in
some respects compared to you, the opposite, except maybe when
he's bowling.

Speaker 2 (43:38):
Yeah, except when he's when he's competing and he's after
you talk about a death stare or someone that was
in a contest. You wouldn't find many many better than
him any day of his life, any day of his career.
If he was injured, if he was tired, I didn't
mate it. Once he was in a contest, then he
was in a contest.

Speaker 1 (43:53):
Yeah, if you're up against him, he wants you but
outside of that, like games over, you know, you've got
a couple of days hanging out in England.

Speaker 2 (44:03):
I mean there's probably more made to warning party wise
and lifestyle wise than there actually was. Like there was
this big, big persona big, fun loving character outside of
the game, but yeah, he wasn't as big a party
of as whatever and probably thought he was. And as
you say, God, God bless, God rest his soul. But
the thing I always sort of joke about with him

(44:24):
was that everyone of us says, oh, how did you
used to look after him and how did you use
the captain him? I said, well, thankfully it was only
from ten thirty am to six thirty pm, and I
didn't have to worry about the rest. I didn't want
to know what was happening post six thirty pm.

Speaker 1 (44:37):
Was was he his bigger characters everyone? Hundred percent?

Speaker 2 (44:40):
Yeah, And you've got to just think back to his
whole life. I mean he was, you know, one stage,
he's signed with Nikey's over in the Nike factory in
the US, hanging out with Michael Jordan designing cricketures for
like he was a big deal. Like he went from
you know, a little fat kid from black Rock or
somewhere to all of a sudden in three or four
years being probably the biggest superstar on the world cricketing stage.

(45:01):
And it went and it even went further than that,
you know, with his persona and so look ego wise,
character wise. When I first became the captain, there were
probably there were two other guys I thought were going
to become a captain ahead of me.

Speaker 1 (45:15):
One was Warning, one was Gilly.

Speaker 2 (45:18):
But Cricket Australia thought that I was the right man
for the role at the right time.

Speaker 1 (45:23):
But how did I manage that?

Speaker 2 (45:25):
The easy way to say that I managed that was
I didn't change myself just because I became the captain.
I was the same person in that team that I
always was, you know, as I was always a bit
of an Alarican around the team as well. You know,
I got mucking around, oh yeah, and just you know,
I enjoyed a drink as much as anybody and got
myself in the first year of trouble along the way
and got dropped a couple of times earlier in my careers.
And so but when I became captain, I didn't. I

(45:48):
wasn't I'm not all of a sudden gone from here
to here and I'm the boss and I'm making all
the decisions.

Speaker 1 (45:53):
It wasn't like that.

Speaker 2 (45:53):
It's I got that vision across really clearly of the
way that the team was going to be, the way
the team was going to operate, and the way that
I'm going to do things. But I just remained exactly
the same person. I think that's where I got the
respect from all the players along the way with.

Speaker 1 (46:07):
It, and that it probably helps we helme from to
like in terms of how you grew up, Like it's
not like I'm not having to create a private school kids,
because most kids end up going to private schools after
the parents piece of money. But like that you can
sort of it, can not demand it. That respect comes
to you when you sort of grew up in a
more humble environment too. But automatically he's not a show off,

(46:28):
he's not himself.

Speaker 2 (46:30):
Yeah, And cricket's a lot like that, to be honest,
Like a lot of a lot of cricketers are from
the country and there's not a you know, there's probably
a really high proportion of public school kids that end
up playing high level cricket than there is private school kids.

Speaker 1 (46:40):
Just the way that it's worked out over the years.

Speaker 2 (46:41):
So yeah, but that was one thing I was conscious of.
You know, you asked about was there any any practice
things along the way as far as leadership was concerned,
I was conscious of not changing myself.

Speaker 1 (46:50):
I wanted to be the same person.

Speaker 2 (46:52):
And you know, be a little bit more maybe inclusive
in the inside the Australian dressing room than what it
probably had been before.

Speaker 1 (46:58):
So I just and ask you if you're talking about, well,
when you're talking about how how you guys are going
to bear values and you pick the values and you know,
you articulate really well, and then you sort of talked
about how you're going to actually you know, validate that
in terms of training and in terms of effort, in
terms of how you look after yourself and how you
actually play in the field. That's for the whole time

(47:18):
we're talking about, not just you. Then you look at
the current English side. They're playing this sort of formal
cricket at the moment called baseball that sort of seems
to be the opposite to what gave you guys the
success in two thousand and six and seven and that period.

Speaker 2 (47:38):
Well, some would argue that it's actually the same way,
like you think about those champion teams that I was
in the you reuled out.

Speaker 1 (47:44):
Some of those names before.

Speaker 2 (47:45):
We were scoring at a very similar scoring rate to
what England are now, but we're doing it for longer
and doing it for doing it better and doing it
for longer periods of time, which which you have to
be able to do when Test cricket. We just saw
a Test match finish in two days in Perth on
the back of that style of play. England one down,
one hundred runs ahead at lunch on day two. The
game's over that night, Australia winning by eight wickets, like

(48:09):
unless they're willing to change the way that they play
and accept that they are making mistakes and they're failing
long way, which is I'm not sure how much attention
you paid what they've done over the last couple of
years or what they've spoken about since they've been here,
but they made so many glaring mistakes in that last
game in Perth to let Australia back into the game
and then lose what was looking to be the unlosable

(48:33):
Test match. They didn't just lose a lost by eight wickets,
but then they come back at at the end, they
they defended the way that they played, and their captain
has done it from the start. They don't talk about
refining the way they play. They talk about go we'll
go harder next time. We have to go harder next time.
We didn't get hard enough this time. That's the way
they're talking about it. And they're great teams that I
played in. No, if we had a day like that,

(48:54):
we sit down and we address and we make sure
we massage it and fix that style of play for
the next.

Speaker 1 (49:00):
You don't double down on your style.

Speaker 2 (49:03):
Your back your style, your back your style in but
you've got to play moments in games as well, like
ashes cricket. And this is the other thing on one
record saying England said they're coming here with their best
team this century, which is like man for man, their
best team this century?

Speaker 1 (49:17):
Fine, really and it is and it actually is. That's
saying something.

Speaker 2 (49:21):
And they look at our team and they say, oh,
this is the worst team Man for Man that Australia
has had since twenty ten. This is the media says,
and some of their past players have said it. And
then my response to that was, I don't care who
you bring here. I don't care what players you've got.
I don't care what players we've got. You still got
to beat Australia. And there's more to that than just
the individual players you got. Like the skill, that fine,

(49:43):
but when the moments come in a NASHES series, let's
see who's standing up at the end of it. And
last week we saw the characters come out right. Australia
were down and done. Travis said, makes one hundred and
eighty bour and the game's over. And that's that's one
test in a NASHES. It's not We're not just losing
that moment, you're losing the game. So all of a sudden,

(50:03):
there one kneel down. They've got to win. They've got
to win through the next through the next four test
matches if they want to go home with the Ashes.
So yeah, it's all about moments, not about not about
personnel and starts.

Speaker 1 (50:15):
Catch yeah amazing, Yeah, where does someone get that?

Speaker 2 (50:21):
He's six seven, he's running in the still he like
full reach, like that's the other way. So he's bowling,
he's gone that way and he's got the strength to
get back over and get it. That's he's dominant catching hand,
obviously his left hand, but and he's changed direction. Yeah
he's thirty six or thirty seven and still doing that
as well. So that that when we talk about being
prepared and being physically right, that was the start of

(50:43):
the second innings.

Speaker 1 (50:43):
It only just bought finished bowling not that long ago.
So he's back out doing it again. Moments moments like that,
moments that turned the game. So like everyone goes, wow,
what the fuck? How good was that? Like your side
does straight and then everybody just goes up a level
that it sends a message too, doesn't it.

Speaker 2 (51:01):
Like it picks your teammates up, everyone around you lifts
with it that, but imagine what it does in their
dressing room mate, So they're sitting back saying, shit, they're
on again here. They've just bowled us out for one
hundred and seventy. They're up and about again. We're in trouble.
So that's that's the message that it can sent, and
that's what that's what your hope it does. And there's
the two parts of that as well. Right, So that

(51:22):
catch is z that Crawley on a pair, So the
individual scarring comes out of it as well. Stark doesn't
catch that Crawley might get away Mike it runs, he
takes confidence into the Second Test.

Speaker 1 (51:32):
All of a sudden, now he's going to Brisbane.

Speaker 2 (51:34):
With two ducks in the Perth Test, extra pressure comes
back on him and then that pressure can just creep
back down through the rest of your team as well.
So there's there's so many things that can play out
through the course of a Test match and as an
ASHES series.

Speaker 1 (51:48):
So when he goes to the catch is I mean,
there's probably enough time to think about it. It's just instinct.
But do players get the opportunity to make a risk
assessment like you just said, Like, if I go for
this catch on miss it, I'm going to give him
confidence the better. If I get it, I'm going to
crush him and probably crush the dressing shed as well.

(52:10):
Do do you guys have time to think those things?
Not on catches like that?

Speaker 2 (52:15):
And I'd hope to think with anyone the way that
Australian players and teams have played over the years, there's
no not going for its situation. If you are any
chance of going for it, you're going for it because
unless your dog it well, there's no old saying with cricket.
With those sort of catches, you never you never know
unless you ever go yeah, and that's that's what we've

(52:37):
always seen. If you if you are half a chance
to get there, you dive, You put your body on
the line because you guess what, One day you'll catch
one and if you do, that might be the moment
in the game that wins it for us.

Speaker 1 (52:47):
So at what stage did Riggy Pointing go from being
a cricketer, great cricketer, captaining of his country winning World
Series to be coming to understand that, hang on, this
is my business. I'm in the business of being a cricketer.
That's how I make my money. And therefore I've got

(53:09):
to extend my career if I can start planning for
my post you know, post playing for Australia career. What
point did you start realizing this is a bloody business
and it's really good for me and good for my family.

Speaker 2 (53:22):
You know what, I don't think I ever saw it
as a business, although I mean at the end of
my career I was making good money from the game, yep.

Speaker 1 (53:28):
And it wasn't always that way.

Speaker 2 (53:29):
So as a seventeen year old, my first full season
of Sheffield child cricket for Tasmania was ten Sheffield child games,
and I think we played ten one days then as well,
because I used to play a one day on the
back of each Shield game, twenty four thousand dollars.

Speaker 1 (53:44):
That was the full for the whole light. That was
the whole year.

Speaker 2 (53:47):
That's my follit, that's my full contractor So the first
few years I wasn't making a lot of money at
the end. Yes, IPRs come along and create Australia TV
rights goes up and revenue sharing comes in and that
sort of stuff, so where all the players will make
good money at the end.

Speaker 1 (54:00):
But I never looked at it as a business at all.
It was I had a job to do. I was
a cricketer.

Speaker 2 (54:06):
I wanted to I wanted to bat number three. I
wanted to make runs. I wanted a captain Australia. I
wanted to win games. I had other people that could
look after that. I mean, obviously there was business stuff
attached to it. I had great sponsors and great corporate
support and whatever else was was going on. My wife
and I started our own charity foundations well before the
playing days were over, so that took up a bit
of time. But never, never, ever did I look as

(54:29):
the games as a business for me or me as
a businessman within the game.

Speaker 1 (54:34):
So you never really thought to yourself, I've got to,
you know, keep myself properly prepared. I've got to stop
drinking because I want you all my joints be good.
Or I've got to train hard or in the gym
or whatever the case would be in order to keep
my playing years. It lengthened in order that I can
continue our money just to keep playing.

Speaker 2 (54:56):
And what about well I wanted to get for so,
for instance, if you look at that way, if if
there was a well, if I was coming towards the
end in twenty eleven and there was a test a
National Series in twenty thirteen, it was about me being
the best cricket I could to get to there in
two thousand and thirty, and not about making more money
through those two years before I got there.

Speaker 1 (55:14):
It was only ever about about the game. So when
Ricky Pointer become a businessman, at what point, because you
know you're doing a whole lot of TV, you do
you got your wine wine business, which we're talking about,
the moment, you got your charity which you're talking about
as well, and it's just got and you've got lots
of investments, because you know, at some stage you get
to a point you might be thirty six, thirty seven,
you think, or how my cricket's over. How can I

(55:37):
take what I've done and the reputation I'm built, And
you know, I don't want to retire at thirty late,
retire from life. I've got a kids, mortgage, life, schooling,
all that sort of stuff. At what point did you
think about that? Did you have a good story. It's
a good story. The last season that I played.

Speaker 2 (55:56):
By the time that I actually first class cricket were
talking about yeah, yeah, yeah. So the way it worked
out my last my last Sheffield Shield game with Tasmania,
we won the Sheffield Shield and we had a good
young group of players and that's the first title I'd
ever won for Tassy.

Speaker 1 (56:08):
Right, So when was it? What age were you around about?

Speaker 2 (56:10):
I was about thirty eight, twenty and thirteen somewhere there
when I retired, and I had all these great plans
of playing one more year of Sheffield Shield, which meant
that I'd have to get all the way through the winter,
do all the training and whatever else and be ready
to go one more year and then Channel ten came along,
BBL came along, you know, and decided that I'd played
enough and then I was going to transition into the

(56:32):
into the commentary box. But halfway through that first year off,
like I was craving a year off playing. I'd traveled
for you know, twenty twenty years NonStop internationally for twenty years,
so and cricket was you know, I couldn't play the
game the way that I used to be able to
play the game, so that wasn't as enjoyable anymore. So
I was craving this twelve months at home, two little kids,

(56:53):
take them to school, play some golf in the afternoon,
you know. But three or four months in, I'm sitting
at home on the couch, just having taking the kids
at school and having a coffee, and I'm sitting back thinking,
what you like, what are you doing? I'm just so
used to having everything set out for me, and like
when you're an international cricket or when you're when you're
an athlete, the other side that I couldn't replace was
the competition side of life. So in the rush, well

(57:17):
every day you're competing, right, so you're either in the gym,
you're in the nets facing bowlders, or you're playing a game,
or you're looking after you die, to all these things
where you're paying more attention to being competitive, and then
the minute that you retire, all that stops. So all
that competitive edge and juices that you've always had is
not there and you can't replace it. And then so

(57:39):
that's where a bit of commentary took me closer back
to the game again, which I've always said, I think
my happy place is in a cricket dressing room.

Speaker 1 (57:46):
That's where just where I was supposed to be.

Speaker 2 (57:48):
And then with the coaching side of it, that brings
some of that competition back into my life as well,
because I'm coaching against other guys that I played against.
I'm coaching big franchises that hopefully win IPL tournaments and
things like that, so some competition comes back. But that
the one thing I say to everyone now as far
even as far as business is you're going to make
sure you have that ready for you when you retire.

Speaker 1 (58:09):
You need to be able to walk in start it
up early, yep, yep.

Speaker 2 (58:13):
If not have it in the pipeline and ready to go,
you don't. You don't want to take too long in between.

Speaker 1 (58:16):
You and the gap. Yeah, So would it be fair
to say then at some stage in your life you
had to re identify well maybe sort of just change
up who Ricky Pointing is, because Ricky Pointing was the
great competitor cricketer, athlete, and we tended to find ourselves
by what we do for a long perage, especially when

(58:38):
you're doing it from you know, age of eighteen to
age of thirty twenty odd years at the highest level.
Was it a conscious decision like, yeah, I can't identify
where they do it anymore. I'm now going to become
Ricky Pointing, the former cricketer but now a commentator and
blah blah blah.

Speaker 2 (58:53):
I think it just happens. I think it happens organically.
I think your life just goes in different directions like
that once you finished playing. I mean, the cricket's are
a really strange game as well, in the fact that
or everyone being from different states, so that group of players,
a lot of those group of players finished at the
same time, and then you just you drift off. You're
back in your own state, you're back with your own family.
You don't catch up very much. It's it's really it's

(59:14):
actually quite bizarre with the way that works out. We're
all busy, right, we've all got our own lives. If
you don't look up, Yeah, but face to face catching
up and having dinner or whatever like it might happen
a couple of times a year when you happen to
be in each other's state.

Speaker 1 (59:26):
And luckily now I'm working with a lot of those guys.

Speaker 2 (59:28):
I'm working with j L and Lang and Bluey and
these guys that have played a lot of cricket with,
so I can see them there, but otherwise you wouldn't
see them too much at all. But I think there's
just organic change there. Life just leads you in different directions,
right like with never in my wildest dreams that I
think I'll be sitting here or anywhere.

Speaker 1 (59:45):
Talking about the wine business.

Speaker 2 (59:47):
Yeah, the wine business, like growing up in my up,
my upbringing, my Create club, even the guys in my
creat club.

Speaker 1 (59:53):
Now, I think this is a lot of shit.

Speaker 2 (59:55):
How can that little rat bag walking around people? What
a great peano? Nowari has got from Tasmania, because that's
just not how I was brought up. But since I've
been with Rihanna and we've been able to travel and
get around your life. But my wife, you have been
able to travel and get around different parts of the world.
She's sort of really introduced me to wine and we

(01:00:17):
have had a lot of fun drinking it over the years.
And since I've retired, I've been able to drink a
little bit more than I tip when I was playing.
And here we are, you know, five years on with
our with our own brand that we've got thirteen winds
in the range now and telling a story about where
I'm from and up bringing and our love and passion
for wine, and our love and passion to have a
business that we can work on together.

Speaker 1 (01:00:37):
How cool is to be able to do a business
with you, missus after all these years. She's obviously been
there supporting you in your career and now you're doing
a business together or.

Speaker 2 (01:00:45):
One hundred percent and that I'm glad you brought that
up about supporting because she's a qualified solicitor my life,
she did a double degree law of Arts degree, qualified
for that and then hasn't worked a day in a life.
So when we met, she still two years to go
on a degree. So I moved down to Wollongong actually
where she was studying, and we got through that, and
then it became pretty evident that if we were going

(01:01:08):
to if we were going to work and family life
was going to work, that we couldn't have both of
us doing what we wanted wanted to do. So and
I still had ten or twelve years of playing career
ahead of me. So she decided to give up what
she wanted to do to be with me, support me,
and then obviously support our family, and then to have
a business together that we can work. And I talked
about the foundation, and we've had We've had our foundation

(01:01:29):
for sixteen years. We've we've raised I think thirteen fourteen
million dollars for the same foundation, Ponting Foundation. It raises
funds for children and families going through childhood cancer. So
we've done that together and been I had to work
on that, which takes a lot of time and something
we're really proud on, something I'm really passionate about. But
then this comes along and once again, this is very

(01:01:50):
much just a passion project for us, and we want
to be great at what we do. We want to
have a great little business, but also we want to
have a lot of a lot of fun along the
way with it. What is what we've been able to
do over the last five.

Speaker 1 (01:02:01):
Years, so we've got so it's is a panot. So
just take me through, because like I have some involvement
in wine businesses and whiskey businesses. I own some of
those things, and most of people think I've always probably
got somebody to produce for him and put a label
on it and call it ponting something rather than the
way we go. But once you start getting involved and

(01:02:25):
invest in one of these things, it's actually a lot
more detail than that, and it's not a matter of
just taking the cork off and having a drink, which
is what I wish I wish it was not, you know,
right down to things like, you know where I get
the bottles from, where I get the label from, The
label looks like what the name of the business is.
You know where I get my jews from, how I
produce juice. So how many bottles we've got to do?
I don't want to have too many. I want to

(01:02:45):
settle as many as I can. Just take me through
a little bit of the process of you two, the
two of you you and deciding that you want to
set up a wine business, because you just don't wake
a moment, let's set up wine business. There's a lot
more research goes into it. Yeah, my other business part.
We were sitting across there at the moment.

Speaker 2 (01:03:01):
He was the one that He was the one that
rang me, rang me at home one morning, said what
do you think about starting your own wine label? And
I said, mate, I've not even my wadest dreams ever
thought about that. And I said, but just give me
one minute. I'll go and have a chat with rounder
and see what she thinks. And it was literally within
one minute. I rang back and said, Yep, we're keen

(01:03:21):
to do it. We want to do it, but we're
going to do it properly. We're going to do it
in a premium way. We're going to find the best
wine maker then we can find premium. Premium everything everything
about it. What we do got to be premium labeling, bottling,
as you said, all that stuff. We're going to make
sure that it's that it's premium and not just sitting
in the in the fridges an everyday wine. So that

(01:03:42):
was our vision at the start, and our wine maker
was made pretty clear about that. But I'm glad that
you actually brought up We did there as well. About
sticking your label, your name on someone else's stuff. That's
the one thing everyone assumes that, Well, it's happened with
a lot with sort of celebrity brands in the past,
hasn't it where it's.

Speaker 1 (01:03:59):
It's not been there, isn't this.

Speaker 2 (01:04:00):
They're happy to be an ambassador whatever, sit back and
take whatever comes their way from ten percent of something, Yeah,
that's not that's not us here.

Speaker 1 (01:04:06):
So you're producing your own wine and.

Speaker 2 (01:04:08):
We're the major WEN and I are the major shareholders
in the whole business, right, so this is ours and
but that's what we've struggled with the most is people
understanding the authenticity of our involvement in this business.

Speaker 1 (01:04:18):
It's wouldn't be expecting the less from after talking too,
because I wouldn't imagine you had done that, just put
your name on top of someone else's business. It's not
a white label brain, you're not white labeling, or if
someone's not white labeling their their wines, is your name.

Speaker 2 (01:04:31):
To the point that the wine you're holding in your
hand there, that's a Tasmani and Pino Noa so telling
about talking about authenticity and storytelling. Then me being from Tasmania,
I had to have Tasmanium wines in the range to
make it authentic.

Speaker 1 (01:04:43):
Right, So so we've got four.

Speaker 2 (01:04:45):
We've got two pino NOAs, a Chardona and a Pinogree
out of Tasmania, which helps me tie the whole story
together about upbringing where I'm from one of the one
of the that wine there. So that's called the Mowbray Boy.
What is well, my local cricket club was the Mobra
Cricket Club and the area and the suburb that I

(01:05:06):
was brought up in Launceston was around that Mobra region.
So if I'm guarantee you now, if you went down
to Tazzy, you went anywhere to the north of the
state and you said, give me a couple of words
about Ricky Ponting, that would say, oh he's a Mobraid Boddy.

Speaker 1 (01:05:19):
That's all I'd say to you.

Speaker 2 (01:05:20):
And that's why we so there once again there's some
authenticity and storytelling around where the grapes coming from different
parts of so we hand select really where we want
to get our grapes from. So with Ben Riggs, our
winemaker in South Australia, with his knowledge of the South Australia,
MacLaren Vale Bross or Langhorn.

Speaker 1 (01:05:37):
Creek areas like that.

Speaker 2 (01:05:38):
We leave it up to him to pretty much hand
select there and and Tasmania has been a bit more
difficult through the years, the fact that it's actually hard
to get enough volume down there that that what we need.
So you know, three or four years in Arrowhile was
down there basically door knocking on a different vineyards and
different to try and get enough enough stock to get
us done that for that particular vintage. So yeah, so

(01:06:02):
we don't we don't own our own vineyards such that
that's something that we do.

Speaker 1 (01:06:05):
You take other people's grapes, which is britt all.

Speaker 2 (01:06:08):
That's that's what especially for a startup was Pinfolds. By
the way, Penfolds buy a lot of Tasmanian stuff one
hundred percent.

Speaker 1 (01:06:15):
And by the way, how have you guys handled the
better draft down there over last Tasmania? It has been
pretty dry anyway, drought, but it's been pretty dry for
the last couple of years. Has that affected your So know,
we've been we've been good.

Speaker 2 (01:06:27):
We've been good, I mean, and there's been different things
that have happened in South Australia, probably more so remember
the fires there years ago there's been things like that
that can be and that's one of the other reasons
that we didn't launch into buying a vineyard straight up
as a young as a young business. Right you launch
into buying your own vineyard, you've got full running costs
that associated with that, you have a couple of bad
years in a row, and you're stuffed.

Speaker 1 (01:06:47):
You could be stuffed.

Speaker 2 (01:06:48):
So we sort of gently gently at the start. We're
growing really really well.

Speaker 1 (01:06:53):
We're really proud of what we're being sold.

Speaker 2 (01:06:56):
Well. Dan Dan Murphy's has just picked up all the
red wine for this summer. They'll hopefully pick up the
white wines for next summer. Pontingwines dot Com is probably
the easiest way to see selling online as well.

Speaker 1 (01:07:07):
It's on your on your doorstep in a couple of days,
and were pitching your prices like, for example, this pino,
this is a twenty twenty four. This is the Mobray boy,
that's you. We're pitching that's about forty four is about
forty four.

Speaker 2 (01:07:21):
That's about forty four dollars for a higher quality, premium
Tasmanian pino noir, which is the other thing that we
wanted to do and the message to our wine maker
straight away was that let's let's over deliver what's in
the bottle and let's stay at the bottom range of
the premium wine range. Now, premium wine from Tasmania and
selling it cheap is not easy because of the costs

(01:07:42):
that go with making wine and Tasmania are extreme compared
to everywhere else.

Speaker 1 (01:07:47):
So even wine like that. So which was up. That's
the McLaren vale Chiraz.

Speaker 2 (01:07:52):
You know that'll be in store for twenty five twenty
six dollars. So that's it once again, very well, we'll
have a look on the label. It's one, it's one.
Lots of different awards that wine as well.

Speaker 1 (01:08:02):
So I was going to ask you about that because
like is pretty important in the in the liquor industry, wine, whiskey,
whatever gym, especially down in Tasmania. But awards are important
and you, being the style of personality and character that
you are, you guys have been injuring yourself into a
competitions and trying to win awards and every every kind whiskey.

Speaker 2 (01:08:26):
I just opened it up every competition that wine there,
the Barossa Cherez, the one two seven Charras six or
seven weeks ago one Australia's Best Charas Wow International Wine
Show in London, and we're talking hundreds and hundreds of
shiras been sent to that to that one show blind tasting.
As you know, with all the stuff that you've done,
this little five year old business took out Australia's Best Charas.

Speaker 1 (01:08:50):
But then then you talk about awards.

Speaker 2 (01:08:52):
You can't really cash in on that award very much
because that's the that's sort of at the end of
the vintage for that wine. You can't really take all
the bottles back and stick stick it's on it and
tell everybody that.

Speaker 1 (01:09:03):
That this is you might make three thousand bottles and
then once it's solved, that's the end of that award.

Speaker 2 (01:09:09):
Is great, So it actually makes it hard to capitalize.
So having something like this where we can talk about
on social media, and.

Speaker 1 (01:09:13):
That's why because I love to talk about awards because
I think it's important and I think very rare people
get an opportunity to actually boast of guide about what
the fuck they've created.

Speaker 2 (01:09:25):
But it gives people, It gives the consumer reason to
want to try you totally.

Speaker 1 (01:09:29):
I might try got to try it, like it must
be good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it must be good. But
if it's one, especially at an international show, like the
best ches you so you're convening against the charazzas of
all the Australian hurazzas at this London international wine show.
So it was both.

Speaker 2 (01:09:44):
So it was the best Barossa ras so you can
imagine how many sharazes come out of Barrossa. So it
was the best Barossa and the best Australian cres. Well.

Speaker 1 (01:09:51):
So like now you already give us the price and
you can, but you can go to Ponting Wine Pointing
wine stock com dot com, dot are you and we
might be able to get at Some of these are
Dan Murphy's. When you're running, you and your missus and
Ben are running this business, how do you approach how
do you approach your team? I mean, is it Ricky

(01:10:13):
Ponding like the Captain of Australia. We're going to have
that values and how do you approach?

Speaker 2 (01:10:19):
Right in the outset it was yeah, yeah, right absolutely
we went like David and myself and Ranna I went
over and sat down with Ben Riggs. I want makeer
McClaren vale and we sat down for a couple of
days and talked everything through is the way that it
was that.

Speaker 1 (01:10:32):
I wanted things to be.

Speaker 2 (01:10:34):
And I mean it's can be hard for me at
times as well to be as hands on as I
probably need to be or would like to be with it.
When I'm away for six months at a time, I'm
mean in here, I'm in a different time zones. There's
lots of deadlines that are happening with bottling and things
like that. It's hard for me to be on top
of one hundred percent of the business side of things.
And in fact, David looks after all the pretty much

(01:10:55):
all the business side of things, that the ins and
outs and the bottom lines and things like that.

Speaker 1 (01:10:59):
But so that's the hardest part of it.

Speaker 2 (01:11:02):
But and life does start to sort of slow down
a little bit the next couple of years, then that's
when I'll have more of an opportunity around and I
to be able to probably more I won't say invest,
it's not the right word, but more involved probably in
the day to day running of the business.

Speaker 1 (01:11:16):
It seems to me like a cricketers at your level,
cricketers partner wife at a half, particularly when this kids evolved,
is like quite a sort of a I don't want
to get a corny word, but like a blessed relationship
if it works. Because you said you're waste six months

(01:11:37):
of a year. I mean they travel. They've been out
to travel a lot as well. Yeah, they travel and
I speak to they want to like about the same
thing and like it's we're mates. So I get to
talk to fair bit. But like having your family travel
to see you got a way for school holidays, you
know to do it or end or you were to
come back during school holidays if you can, if you
can get here, there's a special sort of relationship there.

(01:11:59):
It's trust, understanding, commitment from both parties. Probably the understanding peace,
like understanding what it takes for you to be the
coach of an IPL side, which is you know you're
in India time zone differences. But also you didn't read me.
It's not like it didn't really look like I couldn't
read you because something was going on and I had

(01:12:21):
to do whatever. And there's there's media you have to attend.
You have to attend to the media in those places too.
How do you how does that all be? Someone who
has been a successful made in marriage is me? I
know you do it?

Speaker 2 (01:12:36):
So I mentioned back a few minutes ago about when
Rannda and I first got together and her being qualified lawyers.

Speaker 1 (01:12:43):
And giving up her career, giving up her career.

Speaker 2 (01:12:45):
But the other thing I said to her at the time,
which is probably the main reason that she gave up
her career when she did, was I'd been on my
first share of Australian tours at that stage anyway, and
I was the young bloke on these tours, and what
became really evident to me, it was exactly the three
week mark on every tour that I went on, is
when the environment around a team started to change. Everyone
started getting a bit narkier. You know, the wind geometer

(01:13:08):
as we used to call it, the wind geometer, it
would just start going up. Every little thing that happened
was blown like mate. And it was because because it
was that separation was about being away from home, being
away from your family, being away from your kids.

Speaker 1 (01:13:19):
That was that exact time.

Speaker 2 (01:13:21):
So I said around, I said, look, I've seen this.
If we're going to make if we're going to make
us work the longest week and have a part is
three weeks at.

Speaker 1 (01:13:28):
A time, in which case she's going to come over
you or whatever the case.

Speaker 2 (01:13:31):
For twenty five years. There's been one occasion where we've
been separated for longer than three years.

Speaker 1 (01:13:36):
That's three weeks at a time.

Speaker 2 (01:13:37):
So set up a structure, had to to make it
to make it work because I've just seen too many
failings and things happen on tours that we felt that
we could control.

Speaker 1 (01:13:47):
Right. So even now with the IPL gig, I'm normally
there for about ten weeks. Works well around the Easter holidays.

Speaker 2 (01:13:55):
The kids normally come over for three three and a
half weeks smack bang in the IPL So that works
really really well.

Speaker 1 (01:14:01):
So we've we've managed it. We've done a great job
of But that that that that requires commitment and effort.
That's why I said earlier on commitments, it's not her compromising,
it's you committing her committing to a process. It's about
a process.

Speaker 2 (01:14:17):
Yeah, and then your kids get to a certain age
as well where they actually want to they want to
be there, they want to be around the teams, they
want to they want to be part of it all.
And yeah, so that's been a really cool thing about
So I've got a seventeen year old girl and a
fourteen year old girl, eleven year old boy and as
much as round and I want to stay together through
that period that the kids are the ones that are
going to her saying when are we going to India?

(01:14:37):
I can't wait to go to India again, and can't
wait to go and hang out with the with the
around that team again. So it's it's a it's a
good environment to.

Speaker 1 (01:14:44):
Have, yeah, but yeah, to be successful though successful anyway,
in any in anything, you have to make lots of compromises.
That's called sacrifices. Do you ever sort of look back
and say, man, I missed that bloody netball game for
my daughter, or missed that or I miss a moment.
Do you ever ever sort of reflect on those things? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:15:05):
I mean yes, but probably it's probably just been a
bit such a big part of my life to understand
that those things, sacrifice and things are going they're going
to be there somewhere. I mean I haven't thankfully, I
haven't missed too many. Next year will be a big
year for us family wise. With my daughter going into
year twelve, we won't travel as much. Next year a
big year for her. I want to make sure that

(01:15:27):
I'm around as much as I can to help her
through that that year as well. So yeah, it's just
I think to be an international sportsman that you have
to make a lot more sacrifices than most people probably imagine.
I mean, I moved away from home at the age
of twenty six, moved to Sydney first where I met Rihanna,

(01:15:48):
and then we've been in Melbourne.

Speaker 1 (01:15:49):
For twelve years.

Speaker 2 (01:15:51):
And you know, I've not spent large chunks of time
with my immediately immediate family at all for twenty five years.

Speaker 1 (01:15:59):
In terms of your brother, this is all and.

Speaker 2 (01:16:03):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I haven't but that then, but
that's where that's just direct the direction that my life's
taken me.

Speaker 1 (01:16:10):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:16:11):
It's like it's not like I haven't deliberately wanted to
be around, but when you're on the road as much
as you are, and then you've got your own family
and commitment, it's really hard to get those big chunks
with your family. But that's international sport. You know. The
thing people probably don't understand about cricket as well. When
you're playing it's eleven months of the year. Your job
is eleven months of the year. You get you get

(01:16:32):
a guarantee six week break every year, but you can't
have six weeks off because you need to be training
and working to get right for the next tournament. And
even when and so seven or eight months of those year,
of those months are probably overseas. So even when you're
but even when you're in Australia and Dave you might
have spoken you about this one was but even when
you're in Australia, your season starts mid November. If you

(01:16:53):
live in Sydney, you only play one test and one
one day in your home state for that whole summer,
so you've only got a week in your own home
even during an Australian summer.

Speaker 1 (01:17:03):
So you just it's it's.

Speaker 2 (01:17:05):
Incredible what you actually what you actually do give up
and sacrifice.

Speaker 1 (01:17:08):
So I'm going to get do you live in hotels
when you go when you spend time, so they don't
have houses or anything well looked after.

Speaker 2 (01:17:15):
I mean those groups that we're talking about, we've probably
we've got probably one hundred and twenty people in our
around our franchise early one time.

Speaker 1 (01:17:21):
So it's still meant the IPL one hundred and twenty
five people aboute hundred and twenty shit, that's huge, that's huge.

Speaker 2 (01:17:28):
Yeah, I mean expended you you think about one hundred
and twenty hotel rooms and one hundred and twenty flights
every other day.

Speaker 1 (01:17:33):
It adds up pretty quickly. Yeah, and then it just
gives a quick insight when I've spent a lot of
time in India working out a business there for many years,
had big stuff. The massive is an amazing place, like colorful, hectic,
like hectics, not even it doesn't even describe the joint.
How do you feel when you're how do you settle
down into adiwe I used to find it hard to
settle down when just have to go over there for work,

(01:17:54):
and then after a short period of time I'd have
to get the hell out of there because my brain
was gone. And then but they're a good way to
get back. It's sort of like a drug. How did
you find when you first go in India? Like, not
as a player, but as a coach well as a
player was harder.

Speaker 2 (01:18:10):
Yeah, as a young bloke experiencing some of the things
that you're talking about there when you don't know what's
waiting for around the corner.

Speaker 1 (01:18:16):
It's mental.

Speaker 2 (01:18:17):
It's hard, like everything is Everything about India is foreign.

Speaker 1 (01:18:19):
To what we know here. All on steroids. The whole
thing everything, cars, traffic.

Speaker 2 (01:18:23):
Airport, scene, smells, yeah, all your senses different. And then
you've got to play cricket. Yeah, so you've got that
going on. You've got a pitch that you've never seen
before that's turning this far. You've got people running from
everywhere to get close to you.

Speaker 1 (01:18:36):
And what the audience is, every easy.

Speaker 2 (01:18:38):
Temperature, everything, everything's different. So the playing days was at
the start was hard. Then you're start getting used to
You're start getting used to the culture. You know where
you can go and what you can do and what
you can't do. And as a coach, I mean I
talked earlier about missing the competition side of things, mate,
I love it. As a coach, I've got twenty five
players with me the whole time. I've got ten or

(01:18:58):
twelve staff around the group. My job to bring those
guys as close as we're going to get together, as
I said.

Speaker 1 (01:19:04):
And win games.

Speaker 2 (01:19:05):
But the enormity of the tournament is something that people
I'm sure everyone knows I think so how big the
tournament is.

Speaker 1 (01:19:13):
But any any young.

Speaker 2 (01:19:15):
Ossie player that I've ever had over at the IPL,
as soon as they get there for a couple of
games in a while, I sit down with them say
what do you think, what's this like? And they describe
it as being an AFL Grand Final every day.

Speaker 1 (01:19:26):
Yeah, every game is.

Speaker 2 (01:19:28):
Every game is sold out.

Speaker 1 (01:19:30):
You can't get in. People are yelling and screaming.

Speaker 2 (01:19:32):
They're turning up to see Dony, they're turning up to
see Coli, They're chanting the whole it is. It is
like you said, the country being on steroid. It's about
It's like the BBL that we have here and that
we love and we get thiscent It's like that's that
on steroids with all the best players in the world
there for eight weeks. So it's pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (01:19:49):
It doesn't stop. India doesn't stop twenty four hours a day,
especially if there's cricket on. Yeah, it's like it's not
just a national sport. There's their idea. In two thousand
and seven, my good mate Jays Packer, who's the whole
family's mad Kreager fans as you know, put on a

(01:20:11):
on his boat. You know about this amazing For a
long time it was my business partner. Yeah. So the
two thousand and seven celebration on the Packer boat, how
much did I tell you as much as go for it.
That was roll the cameras, which it was pretty cool.

Speaker 2 (01:20:26):
It was actually our motivation to win that day because
we knew that James was hovering around somewhere in the
area and he had he had the big the big
yacht there, and we talked about it. It was like, boys,
if we win, we're probably going to be out in
this thing the next day. Yeah, it looked it was,
and everyone was on on loll with the createst ras
staff with there. Obviously all the pliers and families that
were there were out in the boat.

Speaker 1 (01:20:47):
Most people don't realize it's like one hundred plus meters long.
It's like the body field serious craft. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:20:52):
Yeah, but some of our boys had had a few
drinks the night before, obviously celebrating. I had a few
drinks that day before we got on the boat, and
they thought it would be a good idea to get
out on the jet skis.

Speaker 1 (01:21:02):
I've been on those, not these ones anymore, because they
wrote them off. They wrote them off.

Speaker 2 (01:21:05):
They actually crashed into each other at pretty much full speed.
Brad Holg and Shane Watson had a collision on the jet.
We're all sitting up watching them and you could just
see that something was going to happen. Sure enough, they
clipped each other on these jet skis and ramitch, Yeah,
not to them.

Speaker 1 (01:21:21):
They just got They just.

Speaker 2 (01:21:22):
Got flown through the air and whatever else. But the
jet skis were in a slightly not usable We got
they got them back, they got them back onto the mothership.
But what a day it was, you know, they're they're
the great memories you have from the game, being able
to celebrate like that together as a group and because
once again cricket's never been very good at that. Well

(01:21:45):
can you remember a celebration anywhere after a Warld Cup?

Speaker 1 (01:21:48):
But we had.

Speaker 2 (01:21:48):
We had a celebration in ninety nine when we won
the World Cup. We came back here, had a parade
in Sydney and a parade in Melbourne. Talking Aaron Fins
the other day, they haven't had a celebration since two
thousand and they haven't had a reunion. Like cricket just
doesn't do it, just doesn't do it well. It never
has never celebrated those moments. Is the conservatism, I don't
know what it is, probably not wanting to spend the
money cricket Australia. But yeah, so for us to be

(01:22:12):
able to do that then for that day, and I
think we're had half the next day as well before
we flew back. But yeah, pretty pretty special moments.

Speaker 1 (01:22:21):
I know you're going to be commentating in a week's
a week or so's time. We're going to put this
out straight away. So what do you think of the
next Ashal series coming up? What are you expecting as
oppose what you're hoping for?

Speaker 2 (01:22:33):
What are you expecting, Well, England, England might change their
style there there. I'm not going to even use the
word stubborn. It's not stubborn, but they've got themselves set
in this in this way and style of play that
they believe is the only way that they're going to
beat Australia in Australia.

Speaker 1 (01:22:49):
So that's a style they're adopting to beat us as opposed.

Speaker 2 (01:22:51):
To they started it two years ago. But the only
thought that they would have had in their mind is
how can we play? What group of players can we
have that are going to give us the best chance
of winning a Test series in Australia because they haven't
done it for so long. You know that they've only
they've only won four Test matches in Australia this century. Wow,
this series four four Test matches in Australia this century.

(01:23:12):
Three of those were in one series. So they needed
to find a way, a different way in style that
they thought could win. Now what we saw last week
they work and they were you know, they were bossing
the game. They were in front. They can they can
do it again. They can bounce back, but they they
just have to win those moments that I talked about.
If they're not, if they're not in the mindset and

(01:23:33):
the moment enough in the middle of a Test match
to say, Okay, maybe it's just time to refine and
change things a little bit here because this is what
my team needs me to do right here and right now.
Then they'll keep getting the same results whereas But I
still think it'll be a close series. Australia one kneel
up could have easily been one kneel down, Hazelwood out.

(01:23:54):
Still we don't know if Cummins is coming back, so
you know, on paper it's probably one of our weaker
sort of line ups.

Speaker 1 (01:24:00):
But like I said, it doesn't matter.

Speaker 2 (01:24:02):
And Ashes, if you've got to beat Australia, you've got
to beat the man for man, and last week I
went good enough to put.

Speaker 1 (01:24:07):
Him away because I've been hearing Cummins has been in
the nets.

Speaker 2 (01:24:11):
He's gone, well, he's flying. Yeah, So I actually think
he will play this week. I interviewed him last week
and he was pretty confident in what he was getting through,
but also more important how he was pulling up the
next morning. So I'd be surprised if he doesn't play well.

Speaker 1 (01:24:25):
Ricky Bonny, this has been amazing for me, like amazing
opportune for me. Thanks very much. Congratulations on a stellar career.
But thanks for being so want to say, mate, it's
been really cool.

Speaker 2 (01:24:34):
I told the helmets off, mate, I can take the
helmet off. People will get to understand me a little
bit more than they did, and I like your guys
like that.

Speaker 1 (01:24:42):
Thanks

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