Ricky Ponting: Kevin Pietersen's claims of England bullying are true
Wednesday 8 October 2014 13:05, UK
Ricky Ponting has backed up Kevin Pietersen's allegations of a bullying culture within the England set-up.
Pietersen says wicket-keeper Matt Prior and the senior bowlers were responsible for the worst of the offences, forcing team-mates to apologise for misfields and dropped catches.
And the claims made in Pietersen's autobiography have been supported by Ponting, who captained Australia to a record three Ashes defeats against teams featuring the batsman.
He said: "We saw them doing it. James Anderson was always the same, and Graeme Swann - the pointing of fingers and you'd hear a few expletives if there was a misfield or a dropped catch.
"The guys who were doing it were the so-called leaders. That's where the captain has got to come in, not wait and let little things turn into big things. That's what it sounds like has happened in this England team."
Ponting also says he detected signs of mental weakness in England's players even as they were inflicting those three series defeats.
"They had a lot of very good players that were able to achieve a lot of success as a team," said the Tasmanian, who was also skipper when Australia whitewashed England in 2006/7.
"But if you could just get inside of them and start pulling them apart, we always had a feeling they would implode pretty quickly and that's what's happened over the past 12 months.
"I wasn't surprised with Jonathan Trott leaving the Ashes tour, I wasn't surprised with Swann retiring when he did - when the ship started to go down, he jumped off pretty quickly - and now all the Pietersen stuff."
Pietersen, who says his allegations are also supported by England internationals Chris Tremlett and Ajmal Shahzad, tweeted a link to the Australian Daily Telegraph article which carries Ponting's quotes, adding: "Please read this."
Watch Kevin Pietersen's interview with Tim Abraham now by hitting the video link or on our On Demand service.
