Ricky Ponting reveals how ball-tampering scandal affected his plans of coaching Australian T20 side

Legendary former skipper Ricky Ponting has revealed the negative impact of the ball-tampering scandal on his desire to take over as specialist national T20 coach with the Australian side ahead of the men's T20 World Cup which is all set to take place in 2020.

Ponting stated that he had an agreement in place to assume the role from then men's team coach Darren Lehmann with the scandal in South Africa resulting in the strategy being scrapped off. Lehmann resigned soon after the scandal with Justin Langer appointed as his replacement.

"The plan was he (Lehmann) was going to continue on as Test and one-day coach, and I'd take over the entire T20 stuff," said Ponting.

"When he resigned, I just said to Justin straight away, 'Mate, you have to take over all of these teams right now – you need to be the consistent person around the three formats with these players (and) if I can come in and help, then I'll help where I can'."

"Whether he (Langer) wanted it to be that way or not, that's the way it had to be, but when I spoke to him straightaway, he didn't want to upset me and feel like he was taking a job away."

"At the same time, I knew he had to have those three jobs and those three roles," he added. 

Ponting admits that he will be most effective in the shortest format of the game in a coaching role, considering his experience with the Delhi Daredevils and Mumbai Indians. 

"I'm probably more tactically up to date with the trend in that game that any of the others," he said.

"It fits into what I want to do – it's not as a big a time commitment as it is with the other formats."

"Like I've said to Justin all the way through – Justin will have me (around the team) one day out of every month just to be around – but if I'm going to do it, I want to be able to commit and not just look like I'm coming in and out."

"I want to commit to the players more than anything else, I want to be a consistent person, a consistent voice around for the players. If I don't think I can fully commit to doing it for doing most of the time, then I won't do it," Ponting concluded.