Once Were Dreadful

They Used To REALLY Suck

It's so damn hot I can' sleep. The Green Curry I cooked for dinner isn't helping either. So I've decided to charge up my newish laptop and type some thoughts down about... cricket!

Australia secured a face-saving win in the dead rubber Test at the SCG. Amazingly, it took until the second last over to manage it, and the Aussies had to claim the wicket of Graeme Smith who went to the crease in pain with a broken hand. When it was all said and done, I had a chat to PJ and his gal Mu, only to find they were still pretty down about *how* the win was secured and how much they still intensely disliked Ricky Ponting.

It's weird. I keep finding that Ponting gets scant emotional support from average Aussie cricket fans. You'd think he'd slept with their girlfriends (or boyfriends). They tell me that he might be a great batsman but he's an arrogant captain who does not do them proud. All this got me to thinking about the last time Australia had to win a face-saving Test in Sydney and I think that was back in 1987. The Poms had whipped Australia in the Ashes series as the likes of Gooch, Botham and Gatting were doing a Victory lap. It wasn't long after Kim Hughes had quit as Captain in tears. A reluctant Allan Border had been put into his place, and was heading a ragtag collection of questionable players that included some guy called Peter Taylor who was a spin-bowler they found from relative obscurity.

The couple of years preceding that 1987 Sydney Test were worse. Every Test seemed to bring a loss and every loss brought a barrage of press ridicule. Even a complete novice fan like me couldn't miss the viciousness. Those were awful days for Aussie cricket. They seemed to lose and lose and lose - and the press took so much delight in ridiculing those squads. I imagine they're the same kind of journos busily writing negative pieces about Ponting's persona these days. Peter Roebuck was then, as he is today, full of wonderful insight as to what the Australian cricket selectors, team, and audiences were doing wrong against the proper spirit of cricket. Going to the Test in 1987 was a sure way to disappointment, because you knew that they'd get done.

The Sydney Test of 1987 then, was just as likely to end in defeat. Yet, somehow the ragtag bunch of Aussies pulled off an unlikely victory. It was quite the occasion; and had they had a player like Ponting back then, They sure would have won a whole bunch more.

The point is, Ponting right now might not look like it, but he's actually been handed the same difficult task of rebuilding the Australian team, pretty much from scratch - and I don't think he's the worst guy for the job. If today's desperate, loopy, borderline, dodgy win meant anything, it's that the generational change underway has found purchase. The rookie bowlers did very well, and so perhaps we are beginning to see how winning in the post-Warner-McGrath era might look like. This is a very good thing.

Ponting In The Firing Line

When he wins, he's described as arrogant. When he loses, he's described ass sore loser. Yet, he's cast from the mold of winning cricketers that Allan Border seeked to forge back in the late 1980s. Allan Border decided the chumming around had to stop. In order to win, they had to be rudely confrontational and not give and inch to the poms. It took David Gower by surprise in 1989, but the results showed through the years. Even during the Mark Taylor and Steve Waugh captaincies, Australia played a brand of hard-nosed, sledge-ridden, confrontational cricket. It is the aussie way. It's only in this decade that some people have started to question whether this is necessary. Allan Border of 1989 would probably tell such questioners to stick a sock in their mouths and go leap off the Gap.

Ponting came into the squad as a 19 year old prodigy in 1994-5. It seems like not long ago, but it's also seems like forever. This is a guy who grew up in that environment of Aussie cricket's winning ways and he probably knows no other way. To criticise him for arrogance in winning is a little like complaining that winning isn't good enough, that you have to win wit style as well. It's inherently indulgent to ask that of a win. And to complain that he's s sore loser when he loses is a bit much too. There's nothing to like in a loss, when the stakes are so high.

People of other nations complain bitterly about the Australian approach to the game in the last 20 years, but Ponting has never shown that he is anything less than the best of the system that produced him as a player and captain. If other countries' players can't handle the heat, they should get off the field. I find the demand that Ponting be a better sportsman according to some idealised vision of a gentlemanly cricketing culture to be entirely misguided. The man is who he is, and I think he represents us very well. He's there to win. Unlike the journos who move the metaphorical goal posts for the sake of a good story, he is out there foremost to win or lose, with the expectations of a sports-nut nation on its flagship sport.

We've always had hard-nosed guys captaining. It' not like Bobby Simpson or the Chappells or AB or Steve Waugh were any less confrontational or aggressive for a win than Ricky Ponting. The exception was Mark Taylor who had a cultivated public persona, but he was the exception to the rule in as much as his public persona was so affable. Nonetheless he didn't exactly take it easy on the field either. Why should Ponting be any different?

He's now 32-33. He might not be around for a whole deal longer. He'll probably see out the reconstruction of the Aussie side and that's it. So like it or not, we've only got a little bit more of Ponting. Those two or three summers will go in a flash. It's going to be a shame when he leaves, just as it was when AB, Boonie, Marsh, McDermott, Mark Taylor, the Waugh twins, Warnie and McGrath left, one by one. We might not see the likes of him again. The least we could do right now is to appreciate him for the glory of Australian cricket that he is, instead of complaining about his public persona. He's much, much more valuable than that.