Image courtesy of: The Telegraph

Ponting is convinced Australia will continue to improve under the leadership and guidance of Lehmann

Former Australia captain Ricky Ponting believes the national team have a very bright future ahead of them, despite having just lost 3-0 to England in the Ashes series.

Ponting noted that there were a lot of positive moments for Australia throughout the historic series, but also admitted that England won by sheer domination.

“I have kept in touch with it [the Ashes] and putting my biased goggles on for a minute, I think the boys have probably played a little bit better than the scoreline suggests as they have been in with a chance of winning three Tests,” Ponting said. “But the scoreline reads 3-0 and that is the difference sometimes between the really good and experienced teams, and the ones on their way up… the know-how to actually get across the line and to win games.

“England have got a really good team, an experienced team and their bowling group has been together for pretty much the last six or seven years now.”

Ponting also conceded that Australia still had a lot to learn, but added that head coach Darren Lehmann was just the man to lead them in the right direction.

“There are some challenges there for Australia cricket but with Darren Lehmann’s appointment as coach and some of the younger guys they have got around there I think there is enough talent but they are just going to have to learn and at the moment they are learning the hard way,” Ponting said.

The 38-year-old also revealed that he has aspirations of getting involved in coaching at some point in the near future.

“There is no doubt I will stay in the game somewhere,” he said. “There will be some coaching offers that will come my way and I am really interested in coaching. I’m really interested in helping out younger players.

“The state Australian cricket is at, at the moment, my services could be used in some way. We will just wait and see, but the one thing I do not want to do is to travel around the world for six or eight months a year.”