'I don't like playing it'

Twenty20 not Ponting's game

Cricinfo staff

January 8, 2007

Fifty-over matches are more to Ricky Ponting's liking than Twenty20 contests © AFP

Ricky Ponting doesn't like playing Twenty20 matches and believes Australia should contest only one game of the popular format each season. Ponting will captain Australia against England on Tuesday in a warm-up for the tri-series and the SCG is expected to be sold-out.

Ponting, who has 131 runs in four Twenty20 affairs, said his problem with the concept was treating a game between two countries as "just being fun". "I don't really like playing Twenty20 international cricket," he said in the Courier-Mail. "I know it is cracking entertainment for the fans. I can see it would be good fun, and how it might attract new spectators."

He said if the games were limited to one fixture a season and a four-yearly tournament it "might be all right". "Maybe with the odd international game and by having state teams playing a short competition in the way Twenty20 cricket is played in England, I think it has value," he said. "My problem is that I can't play a game in which I'm wearing my national team's colours, and my opponents are wearing theirs, and treat it as just being fun."

However, Andrew Hilditch, the chairman of selectors, said the format should be played seriously ahead of the inaugural Twenty20 World Cup in South Africa in September. "The reality is there's not going to be much difference from one-day cricket, and that Twenty20 is likely to grow and grow," he told AAP.

Australia Twenty20 squad Adam Gilchrist (wk), Matthew Hayden, Ricky Ponting (capt), Michael Hussey, Michael Clarke, Andrew Symonds, Cameron White, Brad Hogg, Brett Lee, Nathan Bracken, Mitchell Johnson, Ben Hilfenhaus.

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