Reinvented Ponting does not want to make history

Ricky Ponting: gunning for Ashes glory

14 April 2012

Ricky Ponting thrust forward a straight, largely defensive bat at everything. Conducting his first press conference here as the 25th Australian cricket captain to lead an Ashes tour in England, he said all the right things without providing his interrogators with a meaningful bullet to fire at the start of this long summer of hype.

At the team's Ashford base, he was charmingly bland, diplomatic and with only the twinkle of mischief in that schoolboyish grin suggesting he might be toying with his hosts. He offered England tons of praise but, when pressed to be too gushing, made us aware, quite cutely, of his real feelings.

Take this exchange. Ponting: "Every side in the world would like to have an allrounder of Andrew Flintoff 's class". English reporter: "Including you?" Ponting: "Well, we've got one. Adam Gilchrist." Oh yes, a real captain's innings.

Yet while admiring the poise and polish of this professional, statesmanlike performance, the mind could not help drifting back to the pictures of a rather more infamous news conference in 1999. Was this really the same figure who, while nursing a black eye and sitting morosely next to the Australian board's chief executive, confessed that he had a drink problem?

Acutely embarrassed, he admitted to not remembering anything of the booze-up after the day-nighter against England at the SCG which had taken him to the Bourbon and Beefsteak nightspot in Sydney's Kings Cross area.

He could neither recall the punch which knocked him out nor how he'd somehow been dumped back at the team hotel. He promised he'd seek counselling and insisted: "I intend to overcome this problem." Yet many felt they'd heard it before. A year earlier, hadn't he been fined for scuffling with a woman in a Calcutta disco?

What a waste, many thought. One of the most brilliant teenage batsmen and fielders Australia had produced coming over as some irresponsible larrikin. Dropped four times from the Test arena in as many years, there seemed no chance he would graduate to the job which, after Steve Waugh's immense reign, looked destined for Shane Warne or Gilchrist.

Yet here we are looking at the result of one of sport's great makeovers. That very public, frank confessional should have told us something about Ponting's courage and determination. He apologised, recognised he'd let everyone down, confronted his weaknesses and, with invaluable backing from Waugh, reinvented himself.

While Warne hasn't ever quite grown up and as Gilchrist just found the jobs of captain, wicketkeeper and batsman too demanding to juggle, Ponting, at 30, said he'd come back "squeaky clean", and has.

The most amazing thing? Even given the rare riches at his disposal, he's followed Waugh's impossible act and threatens to eclipse it. His record as captain already staggers. In three years as the one-day skipper, he's overseen 72 wins in 91 games, a 79 per cent win ratio that is unsurpassed in the game's history.

As Test captain, he has won all four series in his 14 months, including 10 triumphs in 13 Tests and only one defeat (in a dead match against India) and his victory ratio of 77 per cent has only ever been bettered in Test annals by the 1921 Australia side.

There was a point as captain when his batting appeared to suffer yet he now averages more as skipper, almost 60, than he did before. To his team, he's still 'Punter', a more outgoing and clubby figure than his predecessor. Yet perhaps he's just as demanding and steely as Waugh. Which is just as well because you could say his task is nowin. Who'd want to be the Aussie captain who lost the Ashes when there's a generation out there who can hardly conceive that England ever held them?

"I'm not looking at me being the first to lose them," he said. "I'm looking at being just another to retain them. One of the strengths of this team is that we don't ever think about what's happened in the past."

They take their lead from their captain. Do you think Ponting ever sits around thinking who chucked that punch at the Bourbon and Beefsteak? Not a chance when he's too busy plotting a knockout blow for English cricket.

MORE ABOUT

Diplomacy

Kent County

Schools

Reinvented Ponting does not want to make history

Read More