Ponting Too Often Dismissed

My favourite cricketer of all time is Mark Waugh. In the field, “Junior” made difficult catches look easy and impossible catches regular occurrences. I reckon in 10-odd years of watching I saw him drop one ball. As a batter, he combined an effortless, upright grace, that “lean-on-the-ball-and-watch-it-race-though-mid-on”, with a calculated aggressiveness which seemed to manifest as a particular distaste for spin bowling.

M. E. Waugh is always talked about as one of the most entertaining batters to watch, but he was often accused of not caring enough, of being too nonchalant, of under-achieving. It appeared as if effort took the fun out of the game for him, and he couldn’t understand why everyone else was trying so hard when, for him, everything came so easy. This, unsurprisingly, only made me like him more.

Ricky Ponting has never been accused of not trying hard enough. A cricketing prodigy, identified at 11 years old as a potential Australian cricketer, he not only made it, but went on to become arguably the country’s greatest batsman since you-know-who. More than talent, this is testament to his hard work, commitment and competitive instincts. Yet somehow I can’t help but think that these very same traits led to Ponting never really being fully embraced by, if not the Australian public, then the wider cricketing world in general.

Ponting has always been acknowledged as a once in a generation batsmen, but he was never universally loved the way Steve Waugh was; he was never accepted with all his flaws the way Shane Warne was; and he was never forgiven, his on-field success finally outweighing all else, the way Michael Clarke is well on his way to being now.

Far from Australia’s other sporting myths and archetypes, there is a stoic humility expected of Australian Cricket Captains, and if Ponting suffered from a certain lack of grace, it was his boyish competiveness, often mistook for oafish, grown-man anger, that eventually led to him being labelled entitled and ill-tempered, most likely first by a cartoonishly tabloid British press.

But this is an all too simple view that misses the point about Ricky Ponting the competitor: He has always been a scrapper, punching above his weight, playing under 17s as a 13-year-old and first class state cricket at 17. But the best players often don’t make the best leaders (and vice-versa) and Ponting was given the helm of the ship only when no other option presented itself. When it finally began to lilt he attempted to right it the only way he knew, by digging in a scrapping harder, by wanting it more than the other guy.

Eventually his failings as Captain grew to define him, their rarity somehow giving them more significance, and his successes disregarded as a simple right of passage. Ponting got to live his last cricketing years as a number 4, and without the pressure of captaincy he was left to simply make runs, while without the distraction of his captaincy we were left to finally appreciate his talents.