{"id":120267,"date":"2025-09-07T06:52:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-07T06:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/120267\/"},"modified":"2025-09-07T06:52:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T06:52:09","slug":"ricky-ponting-welsh-fire-want-former-australia-captain-as-2026-hundred-head-coach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/120267\/","title":{"rendered":"Ricky Ponting: Welsh Fire want former Australia captain as 2026 Hundred head coach"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welsh Fire have identified Ricky Ponting as their preferred men’s head coach for next year’s edition of The Hundred.<\/p>\n

BBC Sport understands the franchise plan to approach the former Australia captain for talks over the role.<\/p>\n

Ponting, who played 560 times for Australia between 1995 and 2012, combines work as a television pundit with franchise coaching stints.<\/p>\n

The 50-year-old is the current head coach of Indian Premier League side Punjab Kings and Washington Freedom in USA’s Major League Cricket (MLC).<\/p>\n

Freedom’s owners paid \u00a340m for a 50% stake in Welsh Fire<\/a> during this year’s sales of The Hundred franchises.<\/p>\n

Fire have been coached by another Australian, Mike Hussey, for three consecutive seasons after he replaced Gary Kirsten in 2023.<\/a><\/p>\n

Hussey, 50, guided Fire to their best-ever finish of fourth in his first year in charge – narrowly missing out on a spot in the Eliminator on net run-rate.<\/p>\n

However, Fire have largely struggled since and they finished bottom of the standings this year.<\/p>\n

Ponting is seen as having the personality, profile and coaching skills to galvanise the Cardiff-based outfit as The Hundred begins a new era following huge investment in the 100-ball competition.<\/p>\n

Ponting led Mumbai Indians to the IPL title in 2015 before a seven-year spell in charge of Delhi Capitals, who made the play-offs three times under his stewardship.<\/p>\n

In the United States, he oversaw Freedom’s first MLC title in 2024 and they just missed out on back-to-back titles with a narrow defeat to MI New York in this year’s final.<\/p>\n

Tasmania-born Ponting was courted by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) in 2019 for a coaching Hundred job but it never transpired.<\/p>\n

Ponting was also linked with replacing Matthew Mott as England’s white-ball coach in 2024 but ruled himself out, citing the time commitments an international role requires.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Welsh Fire have identified Ricky Ponting as their preferred men’s head coach for next year’s edition of The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":120268,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-120267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120267\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}