At the Close of Play. Ricky Ponting
worries). Fortunately, the other driver and her elderly friend in the passenger seat were okay, if a little shellshocked, and we were fine, though I couldn’t stand still from the adrenalin shooting through my body. Warnie, meanwhile, having established that everyone was safe, was staring blankly at the crumpled front of his Nissan Pulsar Vector, which was eventually taken away by a tow-truck. The poor bloke looked like he was farewelling a dear friend going off to war as his car slowly disappeared from view. He wasn’t totally bulletproof after all. We had to get a cab home.
Shane was the bloke responsible for my ‘Punter’ nickname, which he gave me because of my habit of sneaking down to the TAB twice a week to bet on the dogs. Everyone else called me ‘Pont’ or ‘Ponts’, but to Warnie that wasn’t quite right. I can’t remember if Shane ever came with me to the TAB, but he knew where I was and I think he was impressed with my nerve and the fact I liked a bet. What he definitely did try to do was ‘corrupt’ me by taking me to the nightclubs and casinos he liked to frequent. I had no time for that stuff and resisted for a while. My favourite excuse was that I didn’t own a pair of jeans or a decent shirt (which was 100 per cent true), but that alibi only worked for so long. Eventually, he found some gear, dressed me up and out we went. I might not have looked anything close to 18, but even back then there wasn’t a doorman in the universe who could resist Shane Warne. I can still remember Warnie saying to me during that night out, ‘Well, Punter, what do you reckon?’
And I just replied sheepishly, ‘Aw, mate, I dunno.’
I was like a rabbit in the headlights, not knowing which way to run. I realised the disco was all very colourful, even exhilarating, but my gut instinct said the old world I knew was better for me. Suddenly, I was feeling my age and considerable lack of sophistication. I got home in one piece that night and resolved to wait until I was a bit older before I went back. Cricket was my priority.
Planning is a critical foundation to achieving success. I learned this from a very young age and developed my own preferred process for planning. As Australian captain, I was able to use it to its maximum but it’s also been with me in other teams that I’ve played with. It involves three Vs — Vision, Values and Validation.
The Vision is the over-arching goal of what you want to achieve and how you will get there. It’s set by the captain — as leader you must have a vision for where you are heading with your team and what your critical goals are. I’ve always talked through this with the senior people around me but have set the ultimate goal myself. This is paramount to the position of leader or captain.
The second stage of my planning process is Values. These are set by the leadership group and senior players and are a set of behaviours for how we do things together to ensure we achieve the Vision. The process to create the values empowers the members of the group and ensures that they work with the captain to set the right example and culture for the team.
The third and final part of the process is the Validation. This is where we get the buy-in of the entire team including all the support staff and management. It establishes how we are all going to play a role in achieving the Vision and the principles for how we will go about it. It becomes part of the day-to-day activities of the team as well as the players as individuals. It creates the culture and the standards that the group becomes known for.
Over the years, I’ve been involved in all types of planning processes but when I’m in charge, I prefer to keep it very simple and straightforward as I firmly believe that’s the best way to get full buy-in and validation from the team.
I WAS SOUND ASLEEP and then the phone was ringing. Or was it someone at the door? Maybe it was the alarm. I was confused, didn’t know what was happening, but eventually worked out it was the phone and when I picked it up there was an angry voice: ‘Where the hell are you?’ I looked at the clock and my heart sank. I’d slept in and no matter how fast I moved now there was no escaping the fact I was late. The team was already at the ground.
Welcome to my first game of Shield cricket. I hadn’t gotten out of bed on the wrong side, I just hadn’t gotten out of bed at all. It was no way to start a first-class career.
AT THE START of the 1992–93 season, most observers of cricket in Tasmania believed the selectors would be wary about choosing a 17-year-old kid in Tassie’s Sheffield Shield team. David Boon and Richard Soule had been picked as 17-year-olds, but the pool of players from which the team was chosen was stronger now. Of course, I wanted to be promoted as soon as possible, my expectations fuelled in part by a conversation I’d had with Greg Shipperd, the coach of the Tasmanian team. Greg had brought a group of players to Adelaide for some pre-season training and while he was there he sought me out to say, ‘Mate, you’re in the selectors’ minds. We rate the Second XI games you’ll be playing highly and we’ll be watching them closely.’
One of the changes Rod Marsh had made to the way the Academy was run was to stop scholarship holders from playing Adelaide grade cricket. Instead, from October to December, we played a series of one-day and four-day games, mostly against state Second XIs and usually on first-class grounds, before going back to our home states until the next Academy ‘year’ began in April. When I scored 59 and 161 not out for the Academy against the South Australia Second XI in Adelaide I figured — if Greg was fair dinkum — I must have been a chance for the Shield. When I heard that Danny Buckingham, a stalwart of the Tassie batting order, was out with a groin injury my hopes became even stronger. And then, on Recreation Day, a public holiday held each year in Northern Tasmania on the first Monday in November, I made a hundred for Mowbray against Riverside at Invermay Park. It was — remember I had spent most of my time from age 15 away from Launceston — my first hundred in the top grade for the club. The Shield team was due to be announced 13 days later. Now, I was certain to be in the state side according to the Examiner’s correspondent at the game.
I’d only returned home on the previous Friday, having been away for the best part of seven months. Mum’s first words were to remark on how much fitter I looked, then Dad and I hit Mowbray Golf Course as soon as we could for the first of a number of rounds we played in the following fortnight.
David Boon had been 14 days away from his 18th birthday when he made his first Shield appearance in December 1978, and the local papers were making a fuss about the fact I was in line to make my debut at a younger age (by 15 days). If you had asked me three months earlier if beating Boonie mattered I would have said not at all, but as the first Shield game of the season drew closer and the speculation in the press, around the cricket club and around the family dining table became louder, I suddenly really wanted it to happen. By the middle of the following week I was like the proverbial cat on a hot tin roof, buzzing down the fairways, going for jogs around Rocherlea and out into the bush, anything to keep me occupied. Fortunately — for everyone — I got sent to Canberra to play a four-day game for the Academy, and when I came off at the end of the first day I got the news that I would be playing for Tassie in the first game.
I guess I’m supposed to say that when I heard I’d been chosen I was gripped with a panic, but the truth is I knew I was in good form and I was pretty confident, based on what I’d seen and been taught at the Academy, at Tassie squad practice and in the matches I’d played with Mowbray, that I could step up to the higher standards of the Shield. My debut game would be at Adelaide Oval, a ground I knew so well even the benches in front of the Members’ Stand were familiar to me. It was all excitement and eager anticipation, no fear or dread. I don’t think this self-belief meant I was brash or cocky, but on the cricket field I was definitely comfortable in my own skin.
In the Tassie dressing room, I did what I’d always done when surrounded by men: sat quietly in the corner, listened, did as I was told, and thought twice before asking a question. In the papers, before the game, Rod Marsh had described me as ‘a very sensible, quiet lad’. Still, I couldn’t wait to get out of Canberra and