Ponting has reservations on Smith workload

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Former Australia skipper Ricky Ponting feels that Steve Smith may be overburdening himself as he prepares to lead the Rising Pune Supergiant in the 2017 IPL.

Smith is the Australia skipper across all three formats which Ponting feels may already be too much work but the Tasmanian has opined that it is still too early for Cricket Australia to intervene.

Cricket.com.au asked Ponting whether he thought the RPS captaincy would be something positive for Smith and the former skipper replied: “I’m not so sure.

“Knowing how taxing the captaincy can be, to be captain of three teams for Australia is hard enough. And when you’ve got another couple of months of captaincy and responsibility on top of that, it’s actually quite interesting to see how that will all play out.

“I came out more than 12 months ago now and (said) … for Steve Smith’s best interests, I thought to stand down from the Australian T20 captaincy and have a little bit of a break away from all the extra stuff that you have to do might be a good thing for him mentally.

“But he seems to be coping pretty well with everything at the moment. But we’ll wait and see how that plays out.”

Ponting backed Smith to be successful in the role of RPS skipper though feeling that he is a gifted tactician and one of the modern game’s best leaders.

He would add: “I saw him when I was commentating in the Big Bash a couple of years ago and he did maybe half a season with the Sixers.

“And we were up in the box and we’re trying to analyse and trying to think ahead of the game … and sure enough as we were talking about it, those things were happening on the field.

“The art of captaincy in the T20 game is staying an over or two ahead of the game and I think he does that particularly well.

“That’s why he’s had the success that he’s had as a player. Even with his Test batting, he’s thinking ahead of the game.

“That will hold him in great stead … if he keeps thinking like that then he’ll have great success (as a captain).”

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