Young talent at the top order special: ricky Ponting

Lauding the Indian players in Punjab Kings’ roster as “special” talents, head coach Ricky Ponting says the franchise had the aim of rebuilding the team around the “highest-quality” domestic players.

The PBKS had retained just Prabhsimran Singh and Shashank Singh, and went into the auction with a heavy purse of `110.5 crore, and made some high-end buys such as Shreyas Iyer, Yuzvendra Chahal and Arshdeep Singh.

They have been forming the team’s core since IPL 2025. “Our young Indian talent, the guys at the top of the order, are pretty special.

To build some of those Aussie guys around them, we had a really clear strategy going into the auction (2024) about trying to rebuild this whole team from the bottom up, and change and be different as a franchise,” Ponting told JioHotStar.