Former Australian wicketkeeper Wally Grout once said that whenever England's batting bulldog Ken Barrington walked to the middle, it was as if the Union Jack followed him in his wake. If Ricky Ponting had carried the Australian flag with him as he went out to bat, he wouldn't have dragged it behind him but gripped it tightly and staked it firmly into the grass on the edge of the pitch, such was his eagerness to mark the territory as his own.
There have been few players, if any, more prolific than Ponting in the first innings of a series. More than a quarter of his Test centuries were scored in Australia's first outing against a new opponent. The best of these was his 196 against England at the Gabba in 2006. The giant ton was the foundation on which his side set up its summer, bulldozing England 5-nil to reclaim the Ashes. On other occasions, those first innings hundreds were amassed in much more precarious circumstances. Against South Africa at the MCG in 1998, he walked to the wicket with the score at 4 for 77 and wasn't dismissed until it had reached 302. Against India in 1999 at Adelaide Oval, he and Steve Waugh guided Australia from 4 for 52 to 5 for 291.
It has been sad to watch Ponting's decline. In South Africa last year, he looked distinctly fallible against the inswinger into the pads. It was the type of delivery that, at a more sprightly age, he would have sent swiftly to the midwicket boundary. It is also sad that Ponting announced his decision to retire after the humiliation of his dismissal in Adelaide. Ed Cowan was made to look equally foolish by Jacques Kallis in that match, feet splaying either side of his bat as if he'd lost control of a pogo stick as he gave the South African a simple return catch. Yet it was Ponting's stumble and slide that was replayed ad nauseam (a symptom of our age in which the most meaningless of gaffes is pounced upon.)
Listening to his media conference on Thursday, it was clear that Ponting doesn't want to go but knows he must. "I knew it was time," he told journalists, using the phrase now favoured by almost every sportsman pulling up stumps on an illustrious career. Yet it seemed- on some level at least- that Ponting himself didn't quite believe his own words, as if the time to stop playing Test cricket should arrive for no man, least of all for one so suited to its challenges. Retirement is not in Ponting's nature. Cricket is, in Geoffrey Moorhouse's words, the best loved game, yet there have been few individuals who have enjoyed the sport more than Ponting. His story is well known- the boy from Launceston who as a toddler was given a top by his grandmother proclaiming he would one day be an Australian Test cricketer, who revealed his gifts with bat in hand, who scorned the use of a tennis ball and who debuted for his state just before his 18th birthday.
In his prime, Ponting resembled a welterweight boxer, the type who wouldn't have feared taking on fighters bigger than himself. His facial expressions while fielding- at times petulant, at others impish- confirmed this impression. There can be no doubting his courage- he once batted without a helmet against Pakistani paceman Mohammad Sami in the Sharjah heat and was smacked in the chin as he tried to duck a short ball. He went on to make 150. A Steve Harmison lifter drew blood at Lord's. Four years later at The Oval, he stopped a full-blooded drive from Matt Prior when the ball struck him in the mouth as he fielded at silly point. His arm was crunched by a Kemar Roach rocket in Perth.
Justin Langer says the fastest over he has ever witnessed was faced by Ponting. Standing at the non-strikers end, Langer watched as Shoaib Akhtar hurled down deliveries over 90 miles per hour on a bouncy WACA pitch in 1999. The footage shows Ponting grinning, with that familiar twinkle in his eye, after yet another Akhtar climber has just whistled overhead. But he withstood the onslaught and, with Langer, put on a 327-run partnership for the fifth wicket, rescuing Australia from the perilous position of 4/54. On 197, he slashed a wide delivery from Azhar Mahmood straight to the gully fieldsman. His fury at his dismissal was obvious and typical. He left the field swinging his bat in frustration as he reprimanded himself for his lapse in concentration. But the partnership remains the highest for any wicket at a Test match in Perth.
As a batsman, Ponting played all the shots but made each distinctly his own. His pull was majestic- less a pirouette than a step and swish that allowed him to get on top of the ball and take aim. His repeated cuts off Ashley Giles in his match saving 156 at Old Trafford in 2005 were some of the finest sights cricket has ever offered. More than any other modern batsman, Ponting showed that Test hundreds are like works of art, like dramas, like concertos: crafted with great care but always showing the fingerprints of their creators.
Ponting has only one Test century in Perth and would dearly love another. Yet if he fails to get there, he should take some solace in his stats. It would be just as fitting for him to end his career with his century count as it currently stands on 41- the same as the number of symphonies composed by Mozart who, like Ponting, was once a prodigy in his chosen field.
Tags: cricket, tas, south-africa First posted November 30, 2012 15:50:37