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"Hard To Replace Players Like…," Ponting On Retirement Of Kohli And Rohit From Test Cricket

Aashay Chopade

Ricky Ponting on Kohli and Rohit's retirement (Source: @Shebas_10dulkar/X.com)Ricky Ponting on Kohli and Rohit's retirement (Source: @Shebas_10dulkar/X.com)

Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma have retired from Test cricket and there is a lot of debate over the future of Indian cricket in their absence. Many cricket pundits have backed youngsters while others have raised concerns over Shubman Gill's ability to lead a Test team on a difficult tour of England.

Ricky Ponting Shows Trust In India's Talent Pool

Ricky Ponting is one of the former cricketers who backed Shubman Gill during his chat with the ICC review. In the same conversation with ICC review, the former Australian cricketer and current Punjab Kings coach also shared his thoughts on the retirement of Virat Kohli and Shubman Gill.

The Aussie mentioned that it is always hard to replace players who have played for a long time with great success. However, he expressed confidence in India's talent depth and added that if there is any country which can fill the gap quickly, then it is India.

Ponting also cited his IPL experience, stating that he has seen the likes of Yashasvi Jaiswal grow as a player over the years. He mentioned that India would replace the skill side with not much difficulty, but they will mix the experience and felt that the presence of senior players like KL Rahul and Jasprit Bumrah would help the young side to grow.

"It's always very hard to replace players like that that have been around for so long that have played that much Test cricket. But if any country can do it and do it quickly, India can because of the amount of young talent that they have. I've seen it first hand for 10 years now around the IPL and we've seen the emergence of Jaiswal and these sort of guys that have come into international cricket with India and done really well pretty much straight away."


"The skill side of it's one thing to replace and I think India will replace the skill side of it easily enough, but the experience is the big thing that's going to be missing for them. So now even with a young captain with Shubman Gill, they'll still have some experience around with KL, Rahul and Bumrah and these sort of guys."

Thus, Ricky Ponting like many other former cricketers expects India's transition to be smooth. The Australian himself was the coach of a young Punjab Kings' team with many uncapped Indian players and helped them reach the final of the IPL after 11 long years. So, he knows quite a lot of things about the depth in Indian cricket and the young England team under Shubman Gill would be looking to prove him right.