Ponting dismisses whitewash talk

Glenn McGrath’s opinion is never short of entertaining, and the build-up to the forthcoming Ashes series has seen yet another swashbuckling prediction from the seamer. Asked about what he thought the final score would be, he stated that he expected the Aussies to complete a 5-0 whitewash; the same score, incidentally, that he predicted last time around. His captain, however, is paying no attention.

Asked about what he thought about McGrath’s predictions, Ponting told Fox Sports, “I don’t listen to them a lot, for obvious reasons…We feel we’ll be a better team this series than the last time around. Once again, lots of lessons to be learnt from that last Ashes series…Glenn can come out and say whatever he likes. He probably also said if he hadn’t have rolled his ankle last time it would’ve been 5-0.”

Ponting added that the habit of making confident predictions was restricted to McGrath and Shane Warne, rather than the entire team: “It’s … normally Glenn and Shane who come out with those sorts of statements…I’ve often wondered about it over the years, but I think they just like being under pressure. They like putting themselves under pressure about going head to head with opposition players, and it gets them up for the occasion.”