December 8, 2012
Ricky Ponting relaxes over a coffee at Sydney's Brighton Le Sands as he reflects on life less ordinary as a Test cricketer.
RICKY Ponting is a man in metamorphosis.
December 8, 2012
Ricky Ponting relaxes over a coffee at Sydney's Brighton Le Sands as he reflects on life less ordinary as a Test cricketer.
RICKY Ponting is a man in metamorphosis.
The body's hardly cold so it's a bit soon to drag out the former Test player handle and there's little chance a man who has scored 41 Test centuries will ever join the ranks of simple citizen, but there's a shift happening.
A letting down. A letting go.
Huddled over a coffee at a boardwalk cafe on Sydney's Botany Bay in his civvies, he's recognisable even in this part of new Australia. Workmen, waitresses, a passing English tourist all want a bit of him. A photo, an autograph, a handshake. A couple of women in veils line up their phones for a photo from a respectful distance.
Public aside, Ponting has a few things to deal with here.
No, he won't be playing English county cricket despite a flood of offers. No he won't be playing IPL, despite the chance to ride a tidal wave of rupees.
"It's hard to turn down a million dollars," it's suggested.
"Is it?" he answers with that challenging tone. And he is dead serious. "Look, you never say never, but it's highly unlikely I will do either."
Ponting's cricket career ends at the end of this domestic summer.
Yes, he wants to stay around the game, wants to keep working with some of the younger players in the Test and Tasmanian teams, but he won't be travelling in the near future. Not as an embedded coach.
Yes, he and Michael Clarke worked well on the field, but he can admit now Cricket Australia wasn't so sure he should remain in the team after standing down from the captaincy.
Oh, and there's a few things to clear up. Starting with the whole Monkey-gate shambles. There's people in his sights.
More of that later, let's live in the moment straight up.
There were a lot of tears after that last match, but he's had time for a few deep breaths since.
"Emotions have been in check after that week in Perth which was a pretty emotional week on all fronts," he says. "Telling the boys, then doing the press conference with you guys at the end of the match, there were so many emotions flying around. Going to training on the last day knowing it was the last time in the nets with the side was hard, going out to bat in both innings was interesting.
"I was more nervous than I have ever been in the first innings of that game. I was a little bit calmer in the second innings, but it was pretty intense the whole week. My parents were over, Rianna and the girls were there. It was a tough week."
There are further tough times to come. Ponting acknowledges that when he's training in Hobart next week with the Twenty20 franchise and his mates are in the same town getting ready for the first post-Ponting Test, it will be a readjustment to more modest circumstances.
Then comes Friday. The first time Australia will have played without him and without hope of his return.
Always careful with words and concise with syntax, Ponting for once stumbles, confusing dread and regret. You can see how that would happen.
"I am not dreading the decision, it is just the way it had to be," he said. "As much as I thought I could play forever, or wished I could, it was always going to come to an end at some stage."
The last days were an emotional storm. Cricketers come and go, often without acknowledgment, but Ponting's end was profound and moving, on the public stage and off it.
Let him walk you through it.
He'd built himself up for this last game, knowing a win would steal the Test No 1 ranking, but he was knocked off balance by the South African guard of honour and knocked over for eight in his last innings and knew that all was gone. No fairytales here, mate. Just the sinking sensation that the opportunity and his life in cricket had passed.
In the sheds, in the aftermath, he could have been a man alone in a hospital corridor.
"I sat there. I kept my pads on for quite a while, just thinking about everything, thinking about how disappointed I was that game worked out the way it did," he admits. "It wasn't so much about my career being over, because that still hasn't happened yet.
"Gilly came in and tried to have a chat – I gave him nothing. We caught up later that night for a few hours, but I didn't have much to say to him five minutes after I was out. I couldn't see myself but I was reckon I was pretty grey."
After the game, Ponting took his family to the front half of the change rooms for a few drinks before joining the team for a drink in his comfort zone – among the jockstraps and splintered bats out the back.
Clarke became emotional during a presentation speech and Ponting was gone, again, showing that vulnerability that had taken two decades to break through.
He regathered himself to give them a pep talk about the future.
They gave him a bottle of Grange Hermitage for every Test century he scored and each one's vintage matched the year he achieved the milestone. He took possession of 33 on the night, each tagged with details of the game and in a presentation box. Eight post-2007 centuries are yet to be matched with a vintage and will arrive as they are.
Ponting plans to display them in a glass cabinet at home, but has promised that he will drink them with the team.
Funny how things turn out. Australian teams in Ponting's pomp hosted the defeated sides in their dressing rooms, giving them a glimpse of what it was like where the elite lived. Patting them on the back, offering them a consolation beer.
"We spent more time in the South African rooms than we did in our rooms, walked right into one of those drinking games that they play and ended up getting involved in that and sculling four or five beers," Ponting recalls.
"It was a really fun night, it was fun to see what their team means to them – the way they go about things and what their team is compared to ours. It was good to be a part of."
And then it was off to Gilchrist's Perth home where past and present players toasted Ponting's career. There was, according to one player – who said it was the best night of his life – "a lot of love in the room".
Asked to reflect on his career under the "good times" heading, the Tasmanian opts for his debut in 1995. He doesn't need any reminding that umpire Kaiser Hyatt gave him lbw on 96 in a decision that was probably the best argument ever for the DRS.
"Kaiser Hyatt was not so special," he adds flatly.
The umpire was devastated when he saw the replay after play, The Weekend Australian suggests. "I might have been more devastated," Ponting adds. "It clipped me in the box."
Ponting says the team he captained to win the 2006-07 Ashes was another highlight.
"The level of cricket played by our team during that series was as good a cricket as I have been involved with in any team," he said.
And then there was winning the return South African series in Durban in 2009 with almost half the team on their debut tour. "After the game I walked in front of them so I could see the looks on the faces of Hughes, North, McDonald, Siddle, Hilfs. No one thought we could do that."
World Cups were good, he says, but Tests always rate more highly.
And the bad times? It's suggested maybe it is time he said his piece about Harbhajan Singh, Andrew Symonds and the monkey business behind the scenes that made the 2007-08 series so controversial.
"The real story? It's coming, I won't miss too many people with that whole saga, because that was, yeah, I won't miss too many there," he said.
When it is suggested that his anger won't be directed at the BCCI or Indian players, he agrees. Cricket Australia might best brace itself for the Ponting biography due for release next year.
Playing on after stepping down from the captaincy following the 2011 World Cup was an odd decision and the batsman reveals there was some consternation at headquarters about it.
"Cricket Australia was worried about me being in the team with a new captain and I just said to them, 'I am here to make this place a better place, I am not here to get in anyone's way. Michael will captain the side and if he wants advice I will give it, otherwise I will sit in the corner and not say boo'," Ponting said.
"You have to understand that Michael and I know each other really well, we know our strengths and our weaknesses, the things each other can and can't do. Once the captaincy was done, it was about contributing to team."
Times running out, he's between the golf and an appointment with his wife. Then off to play with the Tasmanians and maybe get them to a Shield final when the serious cricket starts again.
By way of a credit roll, here are some things to ponder. No Australian Test player has more runs, centuries or catches, none has played in more winning games or captained more winning games. On the bigger stage only Sachin Tendulkar has more runs and Rahul Dravid more catches. Nobody has captained a side to so many Test victories or won so many trophies.
There was so much one day cricket it is a blur, but remember Australia was undefeated in 34 World Cup matches with Ponting as leader.
Lay the text across a couple of those classic shots. That pull he played in the nets as a teenager that caused Rod Marsh to announce he had found the next Test champion, that drive that directed itself through covers, finding a path between fielders and not stopping until it skipped over that boundary rope …
There's more, but you have to give up sometime and these stories probably need to be told over a nice glass of red. A nice glass of red with an appropriate vintage.
Courtesy: The Australian
