SYDNEY, Nov 20: Ricky Ponting's captaincy will be under scrutiny in his jousts with counterpart Andrew Flintoff after being derided as the Australian skipper who lost the prized Ashes to England.

Perhaps no Australian player absorbed more of the blame for last year's Ashes loss after 16 years than Ponting.Ponting, who inherited an ageing Australian team after golden eras under Mark Taylor and Steve Waugh, was lambasted for his tactics and consensus approach to the captaincy as England ran the show to win the epic series 2-1.

Constant reminders over the last 14 months of his unwanted place in Australian cricket history have spurred the 31-year-old Tasmanian to declare the lessons have been learnt and now it's time to retrieve the urn.

“We will be a better team this time around. We've looked at ourselves closer than before the last Ashes. We've identified what might have held us back last time,” Ponting said.“I don't think there's going to be too much drastic change — we just made a lot of mistakes last time.

“The no-balls we bowled, we put a lot of catches down, when we had partnerships going, we managed to make a mistake that got England back into the game, or Andrew Flintoff came on and got a wicket.

“They're things we won't allow to happen again.”—AFP