How Ricky Ponting inspired the Washington Freedom juggernaut

Just within four weeks, Ricky Ponting's Washington Freedom cap was weathered. Not the grit and grime his beloved baggy green was exposed to for a fifth of the century, but his Freedom cap laid bleached with chalky marks of sweat. Apart from his towering persona, that sweat allowed him to lead by example to build a high performance environment and inculcate a winning culture. According to a reliable source, Ponting had never missed even an optional training session in the sapping heat of Delhi during his seven years at helm. He'd always be there, even if that required being present for a single non-capped Indian player.

He brought the same work ethic to America. He was out there giving throwdowns for almost the entirety of Freedom's practice sessions. While the star international players who were coming off a gruelling IPL and the World Cup preferred to skip optional net sessions, Ponting would still invariably be present for the domestics with the same intensity of his heydays. In what would seem like a trivial exercise to many, Ponting was out there giving throwdowns to Andrew Tye and Saurabh Netravalkar, his number 10 and 11s before the all important final. Ponting realised that Tye and Netravalkar had not had a hit the whole tournament, making it a point to leave no stone unturned for silverware that had eluded him for a long time at DC.

"That's just the way that I am. It's ingrained in me. I'm not going to sit back and waste any time around cricket. And that's one of the other things I say to the boys first off is I don't like lazy people. I don't like people with talent that don't try and get the most out of themselves. So if I can show that attitude as a retired player and almost impose on them the way that I want them to go about their cricket while I'm here then hopefully that only makes them better," Ponting told Cricbuzz in an exclusive interview on his approach towards training sessions.

Freedom looked like a well-oiled unit this year right from the get go. They raced into the playoffs after dropping only a solitary game in the league stage. Freedom exuded an air of invincibility in the playoffs. The dominance was palpable in the body language Steven Smith and his men exhibited, as they trounced the San Francisco Unicorns twice in two one sided encounters.

"What makes you angry?" asked the Freedom social media manager moments after the win. "Losing" responded Ponting in a steely voice. "What makes you happy?" asked the media manager again, "winning" said Ponting this time around with a grin of a child.

For a man known for loathing defeat, for a captain habituated to ending on the right side of the result in the most decisive of games, you could feel this championship win had hit home for the once-champion cricketer. Ponting revelled yet again in the euphoria of a championship with his Freedom contingent but his eyes kept wandering for his family that were seated in stands. The Ponting family met in a tight embrace after his three kids and wife Riyanna entered the field. Riyanna's tears of joy were a dead give away of what it meant to Ponting, who can be frugal with his emotions at times.

Ponting admitted to focusing more on mentoring the domestic talent and letting the international players take the ownership of their outcomes in their own experienced hands. But he had to tune out the noise for Freedom captain Smith, who was deemed surplus to requirements by Australia for their World Cup squad and Glenn Maxwell who came on the back of an underwhelming IPL. Smith feasted on his role at the top of the order, banishing the new ball and his naysayers alike.

He was back to his flamboyant best, getting off the blocks early along with Travis Head wresting the momentum towards Freedom from the onset. Averaging a whopping 56 runs per game, he saved his best for the finale, producing a whirlwind innings of 88 that deflated the Unicorns at the halfway stage. Maxwell, who flattered to deceive with the bat, kept picking wickets with his off spin, before coming to the party in the playoffs by clubbing 9 sixes and 5 fours in the space of 45 deliveries spread over two games.

One of the hallmarks of the team culture laid down by Ponting has been its egalitarian nature. Mukhtar Ahmed, former Pakistan international and now a USA domestic, had opened in all of his previous 55 T20 games in a decade-long career. But with Smith and Head occupying the spots, Ahmed was forced down to number 6 in most games and was confined to playing the last couple of overs. "I'm playing 5 or 6 balls but he makes me feel like I am the one winning games for my side," Ahmed said of Ponting. Before the final, Ponting had tipped Ahmed to either score the winning runs for his side or play a brief cameo if Freedom batted first. Ahmed sizzled in his unbeaten cameo of 19 of 9 deliveries that had the Freedom surpass the 200-run mark.

USA fast bowler Jasdeep Singh reckons he felt 'empowered' in the team culture he found at Freedom. Jasdeep quite serendipitously put in two man of the match performances in as many games before Netravalkar returned from his sojourn. "I had asked Ricky to allow me to bowl a bouncer or two every over as I was bowling with a bigger leg side boundary. He agreed in an instant and encouraged me to execute my game plans," Jasdeep said after wrecking MI New York's top-order.

Apart from being the fulcrum of the side on the field, Ponting had spelled out coaching and mentoring duties for the international players to further nurture the young domestic talent in the team during the course of the tournament. Akhilesh Bodugum, a talented young off-spinner was quite taken aback with the way a player of the stature of Maxwell repeatedly found time to help refine his game, at times in the middle of his match routine.

"This was before one of our games. Everybody's doing their own thing, following their own pre-match routine. I was working with Michael Klinger on a fielding drill. I was working on picking up the ball and getting a good throw in. And then Maxwell saw me do it. He came up to me and he literally spent like 15-20 minutes before the game. He wasn't doing his routine, he was with me trying to make sure I understood how to do the drill," Bodugum said.

While the team management fostered a healthy dressing room environment, the owners went all out to facilitate the players in their off-field affairs. Netravalkar, who had gone back home to California expecting the birth of his first child in the middle of the tournament was flown back to Morrisville after doctors perceived a few more days in the date of the baby delivery. The owners made special travel arrangements for Netravalkar to fly in and out of Morrisville within a day for him to be back with the expectant mother. Netravalkar repaid the faith with a four-wicket haul.

"People like winners," Dhiraj Malhotra said before the tournament when being quizzed about whether Freedom found themselves behind the 8-ball in terms of fan engagement with the American offshoots of IPL franchises like TSK, MINY and LAKR. "If you look at those three teams, they have [won] 13 of the 16[17] IPL seasons and its easier to build a fan base out of that."

Freedom played a deeply infectious, bold and refreshing brand of cricket in this edition of the MLC. The 10-time surge in their Instagram followers compared to previous season is a testimony that Freedom is winning not just on the cricket field but beyond the boundary as well.