Aug 17, 2010

Winning Ashes 5-0 “absolutely possible”: Ricky Ponting

Australian captain Ricky Ponting said Monday it was "absolutely possible" that his team could reclaim the Ashes with a 5-0 sweep against England later this year.

Ponting, who lost the Ashes for a 2nd time as a skipper in the 2-1 series defeat in England last year, said the Australians had learnt from their mistakes and were a better side than the last Ashes contest.

Australia have slipped to 4th, narrowly ahead of England, in the Test rankings after their 1-1 drawn Test series against 6th ranked Pakistan in England last month.

But Ponting, who met Cricket Australia officials in Melbourne on Monday to map out preparations for the November-January Ashes series, is unconcerned.

"It's absolutely possible. There's no reason why not," Ponting told reporters at the Melbourne Cricket Ground when asked about a 5-0 Ashes sweep. "It's all in our hands. It's how well we play and how well we take charge of different situations.

"We've learnt from a lot of the mistakes that we've made. There's no doubt we made some mistakes in the last Ashes series in England that probably at the end of the day cost us the series.

"We know now that we're a more experienced and probably a better team now than we were then. We put that together plus we're playing in our conditions, we hope to win this series and win it well.

"I've got confidence in the squad of players that we've got that they are going to be good enough to win an Ashes series."

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