“I wouldn’t say no, but…,”: Ricky Ponting opens up about taking mentor, coach role at Olympics 2028

New Delhi [India], August 11 (ANI): Former Australia captain Ricky Ponting opened up about the prospect of serving as a mentor or coach for the Baggy Greens team at the LA 28 Olympics.

Cricket finally made its return to the Olympics after making its last appearance in the Games in 1900. The sport is now set to make its long-awaited comeback after 128 years at the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics.

Cricket featured among the five additional sports proposed by the LA28 Organising Committee for inclusion alongside baseball-softball, flag football, lacrosse and squash. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) officially confirmed cricket’s inclusion at the 141st IOC Session held in Mumbai in October 2023.

Top teams across the world will eye to get their hands on an Olympic medal in their debut. When quizzed about the prospect of serving as a mentor or coach for the Australian cricket team at the 2028 Olympic Games, Ponting expressed his excitement about the potential opportunity and made his intention clear about taking it.

“It’d be a pretty nice job, I reckon, to be a mentor around a cricket team in the Olympic Games, to hang out. I was lucky enough to play in the Commonwealth Games, and just to be around the athletes in the villages and stuff was quite a surreal environment to be in for a cricketer,” Ponting said in the ICC Review.

“So, look, I wouldn’t say no, but I think there’ll be a lot of people putting their hands up to try and be a mentor or a coach for an Aussie team in the Olympic Games. It’d be special to be a part of, so who knows? We’ll keep my fingers crossed and see what happens,” he added.

Ponting also expressed his views about the inclusion of cricket in the Summer Games and the window of opportunity that it presents to take the game to the global stage.

“It can only be a positive thing for our game. I have sat on various committees over the last 15 or 20 years, and it is always been on the top of almost every agenda – how do we get the game back into the Olympics? And finally, it is there. It is only four years away. Once again, in the US by that stage, hopefully, with MLC (Major League Cricket), another four years down the track hopefully growing,” he said.

“Who knows, there might even be more teams in the MLC by then. I think it also gives cricket a chance to break into the grassroots level in the US. But the thing about the Olympic Games, I mean, it is not the host nation. It is about the audience that it opens up. The Olympic Games, being viewed by so many people all around the world, just opens up completely different audiences to our game, that is seemingly growing on a daily basis anyway. It can only be a real positive thing for the game. Facilities and infrastructure and those things are going to be key, and how many teams they actually decide on. I think it is only six or seven teams that they are talking about. So qualification is going to be at a premium, how you actually qualify to get into the Olympic Games,” he added.