Steve Smith may struggle with the burden of leading Australia in all three formats after being named skipper for the upcoming T20 cricket World Cup, former captain Ricky Ponting has warned.
Smith will lead Australia to India this March after being named to replace Aaron Finch, who's been dumped from the role.
Ponting concurrently held the captaincy in all three formats during his career, including leading Australia to a one-day and T20 World Cup within 12 months in 2007.
He's concerned Smith's ever-increasing workload may be too much to bear given his relative youth and inexperience as captain.
"With T20, more than anything, you have to look a couple of overs ahead of the game," Ponting told SEN radio.
"I think it'll start catching up with him pretty quickly. It did with me anyway.
"He's only new into the Test captaincy really and (played) a bit of one-day cricket here and there."
Ponting, who now coaches Indian Premier League franchise Mumbai Indians, was surprised Finch was snubbed for the role, speculating a hamstring injury suffered by the opening batsman in the T20 series against India may be worse than thought.
He also defended regular wicketkeeper Matthew Wade's axing from the squad, saying favoured gloveman Peter Neville would cope better with slow bowlers.
"They're (selectors) obviously looking for their best wicketkeeper on Indian pitches considering that keeper would be standing up to the stumps to a lot of spin bowling," he said," he said.
