Ricky Plays It His Way (As Always)

Ricky Ponting made a late declaration

Ricky Ponting has written his own farewell speech in announcing his retirement from Test cricket, effective following Perth. As he has done for almost all of his career, he has made an informed decision. In time, we'll know exactly who informed him but its hard not to assume he was given the choice of going with grace or repeating the farce that accompanied his resignation from the captaincy.

This time son, leave with dignity.

There will be some who despair at this writer's insistence that Ponting be responsible for all of his record, especially in the emotional outpouring which is certain to overflow during the next week. By Wednesday, you won't be able to distinguish him from Mother Teresa and women will be bringing their crippled babies to the dressing room door looking for miracle cures. His playing record will be illuminated and reiterated ad infinitum and fairly so - its a splendid record of achievement which ranks him with the greatest batsmen who have played the game. No question. No dispute. Cue the words "legend", "champion", "greatest".

So what follows isn't said in isolation from his batting achievements or his outstanding fielding ability nor does it disregard his captaincy record. The truth about Ponting is that his extraordinary playing abilities have, as they did with Shane Warne, provided the leverage so that administrators of the game have changed the unwritten rules to retain him. Not playing conditions or the laws of cricket but so many of the unspoken standards of the greater game of cricket which the seduction of money has sullied in roughly the span of his career. Through, I might add, no fault of his own.

The real problem is not just the unrealistic expectations the public puts on our highly performed players but the bloated accolades which will be decanted with short and conditional memory, colouring up the glorious and screening the seedy.

@#$%^&*

Ponting has always been a hot head and quick to rise to temper and none of that has ever changed. Cricket Australia and his mates, have just become so good at covering his tracks. As a young player, he was touted as a prince, rising from Tasmania and ascending to the Test side like royalty. He paid his dues with runs and super innings from go to woe, starting with 96 against Sri Lanka and still doing brilliant things last summer against India, but it has always been the "other" things which should have been handed to him with all their consequences, not just the ones he was prepared to accept.

In his early years, before he rose to captaincy, Ponting drank too much, said too much and flaunted his celebrity. In India, he handled introductions in a night club by exposing more than his genius to a female patron and back in Sydney, a bouncer who cared not a toss for a tosser, sat him on his backside for the sort of drunken ignorance that ruins your Saturday night. He told the media he was justly sorry after the Sydney incident, black eye starkly on show. He had a problem. He'd fix it. But we all had the problem. Brimming with runs or not, that should have been the end of him.

The mistake was to indulge the problems of alcohol and an over-inflated self opinion and not realise they were symptoms of a weakness in character that should never have been placed in a leadership role. In crisis, Ponting always responds emotionally as his first strike, instinctive reaction. Following, he could have been managed in manner beneficial to himself, as well as others. His ability to be an even better follower was demonstrated under Steve Waugh and even more obviously under Michael Clarke.

Once he became captain, he was surrounded with better spin but it didn't change the basic problem. Ponting's short fuse would bubble over repeatedly as he became the most fined and censured of all modern Australian cricketers and pretty much the world. Dressing room furniture was on danger money as TV's and windows were attacked off the field and umpires on it. All the while, he was building a team of thugs, who's first port of call in a cricketing storm was to swear and intimidate. Several of the Australians acted as his on field bouncers and the worst of this manner of playing boiled over in the atrocious scenes during the Sydney Test against the Indians five years ago. The miracle of Michael Clarke bowling two overs to take the last three wickets and win an epic Test, was lost amongst the boorish scenes of Ponting's aggressive and buffoonish on field celebrations. The Harbajhan-Symonds saga was just smoke screen.

The late Peter Roebuck called for his sacking there and then but again, Ponting was too big to be disciplined in the manner fit and Roebuck was lampooned by the media and sanctioned by the Australian players.

If Ricky Ponting has never been made a fit person to wear the Baggy Green, then its Cricket Australia who must take the blame. Be sure to understand and not confuse that statement. If I had said "player" the statement was indefensible. Our reputation and that of the game and our players was tarnished under Ponting and CA did very little to fix the problem. They just kept picking the plate up when the baby threw it on the floor. It used to be, that no player was bigger than the game, an argument that even the self-marketed Bradman played at least lip service to. Warne and Ponting changed that.

Much has always been made of his captaincy record and so it should, for when the only blokes with a higher win percentage than you are Steve Waugh and Don Bradman, then you have bragging rights but you know what they claim about statistics. Ponting's asset as a skipper was his ability to rouse his men. He was renowned for his stirring oratory before taking the field and when he scored hundreds against the odds, he may as well have painted his face blue, waved his bat above his head and yelled Scottish obscenities. It was his big captaincy trick that he could inspire.

Unfortunately, that's it. Like Bradman, he had a team full of champions at a time when the oppositions were weak and of course, he had himself batting at three. As a tactician he was hopeless, slavishly following plans made off the field and failing to adapt to changing conditions on. Like English architects in the 19th century who bought plans for towns and cities made at home and dropped them on Australian landscapes, Ponting had no idea how to use his bowling resources outside of convention. Its the reason he had so many arguments with Warne on the 2005 tour of England, because Warne, ever the innovator, wanted to throw the coach's plans out the window. Its also the reason Australia lost that series.

A lesser failing was his refusal to back his players once the media tore into them. When Warne tested positive to steroids just before the World Cup, Ponting attacked him in the press conference which followed the revelation. Mother CA cleaned up after him. When Andrew Symonds went fishing, the acting captain Clarke was direct but supportive. Away from the team, Ponting was terse.

Yes, Ponting won 62% of matches he captained but he is also the only Aussie skipper to loose the Ashes twice in the last hundred or so years.

In all the gloss and afterglow, Ricky Ponting will be called one of our greatest champions. Even ten minutes after the announcement this afternoon he was being described as our greatest batsman of all time, a claim that even his ego he would deny. His playing record is superb and watching him at his best - a condition that lasted longer than almost all batsmen I have watched since 1968 - was to have your senses lubricated in a way that only the finest art or music or poetry can do. He is the second best batsman I have seen in that time, with only Tendulkar his better. His pugnacity and courage are both undoubted and warranted when displayed in many tough situations. Ponting was a man you wanted with you when things got tough. Much has been said of the inevitability of victory that Warne and McGrath bought to Australian teams but if I was on a sinking cricket boat with the three of them, I'd choose Ponting every time as the man to pick up his bat and plug the leaks.

Its not enough. The first basic tenant of of cricket is to leave the game better than you found it and Ponting didn't achieve that ... certainly not as a captain. The second is to give the game more than you take from it and on this, Ponting can only claim equality. He took as much as he put in, with the scandals and the farce of press conferences and his unpredictable emotional state.

The thing is, the players love him. Likely because he is the senior man and his achievements alone make him a god but also because his raw emotions inspire other blokes. He is, above all else, man's man. Clarke had to truncate an answer about Ponting in his press conference, the spectre of Kim Hughes sitting at his shoulder, because he couldn't be sure of holding back a tremor or perhaps a tear.

For a little bloke, Ponting casts an enormous shadow.

In the end, Ponting is the enduring answer to the perennial argument about whether Shane Warne should have been captain. If they were the only to balls in the box, I'd pick Warne because he had tactical acumen and was prepared to gamble, but like the little Taswegian, the rest would have been a disaster.

If I was picking the best Australia side of all time, Ponting would be in it. No hesitation. He's the best Australian batsmen certainly since Greg Chappell and probably since Neil Harvey. He could take a game away from you. He could hurt you and only Mark Waugh was a better fieldsman anywhere on a cricket field. He played many fine innings but his last day 156 at Manchester in 2005 remains my favourite. Like the rest of Australia, I feel like his batting has been taken from us.

I hope he takes the other stuff with him too.