The Bitter End

Ponting Retires From Captaincy

I feel like I've been watching Ricky Ponting for a long time. If there's one sporting figure that makes me feel old, it's actually Ricky Ponting. Not Derek Jeter or Roger Federer or even Tiger Woods. But then he's always made me feel that way since he broke into the test side as a 19 year old prodigy. It's very strange to see him at this point in his career being pushed out of his position which looked like a birthright on the way up. The vitriol poured on the man is even more remarkable given his accomplishments as a player. Everybody carries on about Don Bradman, but by all accounts he was equally obnoxious in person if not more so than Ricky Ponting. I get it that there's some part of a professional athlete's job description to be likeable, but I've always felt people are asking way too much of this guy.

Maybe I'm a bit weird that way. I can handle Barry Bonds being Bary Bonds, Canseco being Canseco, Clemens being Clemens; steroids and lies and bad attitudes and rudeness and all. I don't expect them to be role models. I liked John McEnroe at his rudest. I liked Michael Jordan at his most disdainful, Charles Barkley at his most pugnacious and Shane Heal for standing toe to toe with Sir Charles at the Atlanta Olympics, screaming back at his face. Ricky sledges? "Why not?" I thought. Sledge away, son. He wins ugly? Sure beats losing beautifully.

Anyway, he quit the captaincy today and the obits on his captaincy are in.

The difference was as simple as Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath, who played all the Waugh years, and all the Mark Taylor years before him, but only half of Ponting’s. Indubitably, a cricket captain is only as good as his team. Ponting’s was much turned over, became brittle and unstable, yet somehow was allowed to grow old and stagnant, too. It was also distracted by the Indian Premier League revolution.

It was said of Sir Donald Bradman that his unique advantage as captain was himself as batsman. It could be said of captain Ponting that he had only himself upon who to rely. Ponting batted at No. 3 throughout his tenure, indeed has batted in that keystone position exclusively for the past 10 years. It is a singular feat of shouldered responsibility; Sachin Tendulkar, for instance, has never played a Test innings at No. 3.

In his insistence to bat so high, Ponting was in the end too stubborn. The strain showed in other aspects of his captaincy, and grew. But Ponting’s fault was to care too much rather than too little. Besides, no likely usurper emerged, either as captain or No. 3, a detail that tells of Australia’s cricketing decline.

Well I've been saying for about 6years that we don't have as bright a future beyond Ponting as we once thought. So it surprises me a little bit that people are so keen to consign him to the dustbin.

Can he bat any better? Very doubtful. He might strike the occasional vein of form but they will be fewer and last less time with every passing season.

And, with every match he plays on, the reinvigoration of the Australian cricket team is further delayed. How many ageing batsmen can the team carry? Already there are Simon Katich and Mike Hussey, both almost 36. Age marks the prospects of both, yet Katich and Hussey have far more to prove and therefore more reason to play on than Ponting who, despite his record as a thrice-losing Ashes captain, has achieved everything in the game that he could have ever dreamed of.

Each night Julia Gillard must stick pins in her Kevin07 doll; Tony Abbott can doubtless see the face of Malcolm Turnbull every time he pounds the heavy bag. Don't make Michael Clarke carry the baggage of an old leader into a new future.

I don't know about all that. Seems to me they should just let him bat and see what's left in the tank before kicking him to the curb. It's not as if there are better batsmen a-plenty. In its longest run, it's only going to be another couple of summers and then he will well and truly be gone. But you might wait another lifetime to see a batsman as amazing as Ricky Ponting play for Australia. I just don't get the vitriol. You'd think he slept with everybody's spouse - thrice.

Cricket Stuff - 10/01/10

C'arn Mr Roebuck!

I was at a barbecue gathering last night with some folks at Puncher And Wattman and the subject inevitably turned to cricket. It prompted a quick discussion on what people thought of this column by Peter Roebuck.

On the form shown at the SCG against Pakistan, Ricky Ponting and his team will be hard-pressed to recapture the Ashes. At present, they ought to be cast as outsiders. England have a long batting list and are managing to retain a narrow lead over a reviving South African outfit.

Admittedly, the Poms have frailties of their own: they lack a fast bowler, and need Kevin Pietersen to recapture his former powers, but they will not wilt in the heat or be cowed by Australia's victories this season.

On paper, it looks good: four wins in five attempts and every reason to expect a clean sweep against shattered opponents in Hobart. But the tally is misleading. Australia ought not to read too much into their dramatic triumph at the SCG.

For most of the contest, Ricky Ponting and company were outplayed by the world's sixth-ranked side. Certainly it was an extraordinary victory, but sober reflection removes it from the list of great wins likely to remain in the memory. Australia's performance was too flawed to carry the weight assigned to it.

We just couldn't agree with Mr. Roebuck's position on the lesson to be drawn form the test. The way I saw it was that the pitch was diabolical, but Australia can still bat down to the tail. The Pakistanis were tentative and inexperienced and susceptible to the inevitable pressure. Ricky Ponting himself assessed that given how difficult the pitch was, he thought what the Australians were likely to do on the first day with the bat was going to be better than what the Pakistanis were likely to do on the last day.  As events panned out, Ricky Ponting was right.

You'd be hard pushed to argue the toss with a result that worked out just as planned, even if the process looked ugly. Given that part of the thinking was that the process would be ugly, it's a bit much to argue that the ugliness of the process proves the side is deeply flawed.

But then Mr. Roebuck goes on to argue this point:

Certainly, Australia recovered from a much weaker position but even that tells a tale. Historically, turnarounds on that scale can only be achieved by incredible partnerships (Dravid and Laxman in Kolkata, Steyn and Duminy at the MCG) or momentous innings (Lara in the West Indies, Botham at Leeds) or stunning interventions with the ball. No such inspiring efforts were produced at the SCG.

None of the bowlers surpassed themselves, and Peter Siddle was downright ordinary. Nathan Hauritz invited batsmen to plunge into folly, and they obliged. The pitch did not break up, Pakistan did. Australia did take two commendable catches. Had Kamran Akmal had even a moderate match, though, the hosts would have been crushed. It was that close to calamity. Pakistan were the better side but did not believe it.

We just couldn't come at how this was even a point. The way I see it, it's a very well balanced side that can churn out runs with an even spread. They don't come along very often. Ditto with the bowling. At most, it says the Australian team is not built on the 'Stars & Scrubs' model.

I remember those sides in the mid to late 1980s, back when the batting was Allan Border, David Boon and waiting on the potential of the Waugh twins to blossom, plus some serious scrubs. Even with Border mounting many a rescue, those sides lost a lot until the side got more balanced with the addition of the likes of Healy and Tubby Taylor, and then the Waugh twins finally did blossom.

Conversely, I wouldn't want to count on single big partnerships and momentous innings all the time for a come back. If anything, the way the Australians did it shows the side is quite good and without an obvious weak link. But Mr. Roebuck argues this:

Nathan Hauritz's contribution was almost as hard to pin down as Hussey's. Clearly he has improved but he's not suddenly Jim Laker reincarnate. Rather he is a fine cricketer and a game bowler. But batsmen won't keep slogging catches to deep fieldsmen. All told, Pakistan lost eight wickets to skied hits.

Suddenly, Hauritz has taken five wickets in consecutive Test matches, results indicating the welcome and unexpected restoration of finger spin and flight. Yet he is no demon. He was never as bad as he seemed, and is not now as good as recent returns indicate.

The same applies to Australia. Alongside the misfiring Marcus North, the top performers seen at the SCG had been regarded as the team's weakest links. Apart from Brad Haddin's catch, the highlight of the match was Ponting's decision to persist with Hauritz after lunch despite his previous over costing 12 runs. Otherwise it was a mixed bag. Did everything change? Or nothing?

Wouldn't this suggest that the degrees to which the weakest links are considered weak, are a little over-stated? That, maybe the people they've selected are good at some aspects of the game enough to warrant their selection? The joke this summer has been that Hauritz has been the replacement level player, and anybody can get a 5 wicket haul once in a while, but the guy's done it several times in quick succession lately, I think it's possible he's getting the hang of playing at the Test level.

Anyway, we all agreed the column was a real headscratcher from a writer we all respected, and wondered if he's welcome in the Aussie clubhouse at all.

And One More Thing

Here's another Roebuck column where he suggests Ponting is in decline. Judging from his age, it's not surprising if he was, but then Allan Border and Steve Waugh played well, well into their late 30s, so I wouldn't dismiss Ponting just yet.

Anyway, the thing I've noticed is the media vitriol against Ponting has been more snarky than when Kim Hughes was Captain and his side kept losing. A lot of it is criticism about his personal style, which I can live with because I don't care if he's a bit dismissive to journalists as long as he can play. But this business has been going on some time now and the guys at Puncher And Wattman thought it was because Ponting lost the Ashes in England twice.

It's kind of weird to be singling out the winningest Test Captain on record and slamming him for the loss ledger. It's like the practice of American sports journalists where they single out the best player of a team and blame them for a losing season, as if to say they should have been a super-duper star to bail out a bad team from itself all the time - which is the similar kind of analysis to Mr. Roebuck's above. It's just absurd.

The proper understanding should be that the Australian side is in a rebuild and it's going to take some time to shake out the guys who are going to be there for the long haul. The task is harder all the more because Hayden, Langer and Martyn over-stayed their welcome and McGrath and Warne departing in quick succession has meant the side is starting from scratch. The Australian side hasn't been this young since the Kim Hughes days or the 1980s Border sides before the '89 Ashes tour. And you have to admit, Ponting has won a bit more than those guys in that era.

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.