Australia’s two-time world cup winning captain Ricky Ponting has said that the resignation of Tim Paine as the captain of the side just a few days before the upcoming Ashes series will be a distraction for the players during the big series. However, he said that Paine took a huge call to serve the better purpose of Australian cricket.
He said that the issue will not be left behind when Paine joins the side and plays in Brisbane and the talks around the scandal will stick around him for whatever time he will be around in the Australian team. He suggested that the players must make an effort to move on from the saga and knuckle down the issue as soon as possible.
"I think inevitably it will (be a distraction)," Ponting told cricket.com.au. "Yes, he's made a huge call for himself, for Australian cricket and for the betterment of the Australian cricket team. But it's not going to go away.”
"We're only a few weeks out from the first Test – it will bubble along. As much as we would all love to see it go away and there comes a point where it's never talked about, it's inevitable that it's going to be there. If he plays in Brisbane (for the first Test), the rest of the group and everyone needs to move on and do the best they can to forget about it and knuckle down.”
"Unfortunately for Tim he's going to get asked about it everywhere he goes. Whenever you make mistakes and you've got to front up in front of the cricket-loving public, you have some doubts in the back of your mind for a period of time."
Paine resigned from captaincy after an investigation report of a scandal when he texted his female colleague obscene messages was about to come out. He was cleared in a preliminary investigation but Paine said that as he realised the details of those messages would be made public, he put his hands up saying it would not have met the standards of an Australian captain.
Cricket Australia has appointed a five-member panel to select the next skipper of Australia and the vice-captain Pat Cummins and former captain Steve Smith are the frontrunners to replace Paine as the skipper.