Glenn McGrath was the most difficult player to captain, says Ricky Ponting

11/06/2016

Former Australian skipper Ricky Ponting took a cheeky dig at his former teammate Glenn McGrath saying that the pacer would fume whenever he was taken off the attack. Ponting also said that while it would look like McGrath was the easiest one to handle from the outside, it was quite the opposite.

Ricky Ponting is arguably Australia's most successful captain with two World Cups triumphs (2003 and 2007), two Champions Trophies, and a 5-0 drubbing of England in the Ashes in 2006-07 being the most prominent results under his captaincy. But when it came player management, the Aussie great had to face a lots of difficulties and more particularly with pace legend Glenn McGrath. Speaking on BT Sport's coverage of the first Commonwealth Bank Test between Australia and South Africa in Perth, Ponting answered some viewer questions about his time as a captain.

When he was asked to name the most difficult player he had to captain, the Aussie great replied, "I'm going to make a bit of a joke of it - Glenn McGrath was the hardest player for me to captain," he said.

"Everyone will sit back and think that he's the easiest, that you give him the ball, he comes on and he'd do a job for you. And yes, that's right, but at some stage you had to try and get the ball off him as well.

"I'd tell him 'that's enough mate, have a rest' and for the next 10 or 15 minutes he'd be walking around with his sleeve over his mouth calling me every name under the sun,” Ponting, who captained McGrath in 25 Tests and 96 ODIs, recalled.

"He'd stand down at fine leg and he'd be abusing all the crowd just because he wasn't bowling."

The pair enjoyed five Ashes series victories together as well as three World Cup triumphs playing for the Australian cricket team between 1995-2007.