At the Close of Play. Ricky Ponting
though, was poor Phil Emery. So impressed was Mark Taylor with Boonie’s bowling against me that he used him again in the second of the World Series Cup finals (we’d beaten England once and Zimbabwe twice to finish second on the table after the round-robin games), and this time he bowled five overs for just 13 runs and knocked Phil over with a slow, straight delivery that was somehow inside-edged back onto the stumps. Afterwards, Boonie wouldn’t leave our keeper alone, until eventually Phil had to say, ‘Piss off, will you, I don’t want to hear about it again!’
We lost that best-of-three finals series 2–0, but we ran them mighty close. It came down to the 50th over of their run-chase, and our quick, Greg Rowell, bowled nearly the best last over in the history of the game: five perfect yorkers before a low full toss just outside off-stump was slashed over gully by Heals to win them the game. The second game of the finals series wasn’t as exciting, but they still needed 49 of their 50 overs to get home.
The other thing was we beat England in one of the games. Which just goes to show how much depth there was in our cricket.
I think the Australia A experiment was a fruitful exercise, but having gone on to captain Australia myself I can see why Tubby Taylor didn’t like the concept (and he certainly wasn’t the only one in his team who felt that way). If they won, they were the bad guys, but if they lost, their Test and ODI places were in jeopardy. The guys in the main team told me later they hated getting booed at home and fair enough. Things got heated at times and in one match I remember Matty Hayden and Glenn McGrath going at it before Pidge pushed Matty away. On balance, though, I believe the good outweighed the bad, so if Cricket Australia ever wanted to revive the idea I’d be for it. I didn’t have a very productive tournament, but it was still a chance for me at age 19 to share a dressing room with blokes who’d been there, done that, to showcase my technique on a national stage and to come up against the best in the business in matches that mattered. For guys like Greg Blewett (who came into the Australia A team for our last four games and scored a hundred and two fifties) and Paul Reiffel (who was controversially ‘promoted’ to be Australia’s 12th man for the finals), it offered a springboard into the Australian Test team.
My ‘lucky break’ came three weeks after the one-day finals, when Michael Slater had his thumb fractured by England fast bowler Devon Malcolm in the fifth Ashes Test at the WACA. Australia was scheduled to fly to New Zealand straight after that game for an ODI tournament that would also feature India and South Africa and with Slats injured, a new batsman was needed. Realistically, the selectors could have picked any one of seven or eight players (Stuart Law, Damien Martyn, Justin Langer, Darren Lehmann, Michael Bevan, Matt Hayden, Tom Moody, Shaun Young …) but I was the bat they went for, which for me, the entire Ponting family and it seemed much of Mowbray, was just unbelievable.
I was home in Launceston when the phone call came late on a Thursday. I have to admit there was a celebration that night and a stack of phone conversations the next day, as friends, family, cricket officials and reporters queued up to offer their congratulations. I was also quickly invited to a lunch in the city organised by the Century Club, but was a little embarrassed when I realised that my jeans and collared T-shirt hardly met the dress code of the club where the function took place. Boonie, much more up on these sorts of things, was wearing a jacket and tie. Mind you, if I’d known more formal wear was required I’m not sure what I would have done, because at that point in my life I certainly didn’t own a suit and I’m not sure if I even had a necktie to my name.
With all this activity, it took a little while to sink in that I really was an Australian cricketer. The best chance I had to think about what was happening to me came on the Saturday, when I turned out for Mowbray against Launceston, opened the batting, and was out in the second over for a duck. Those who say cricket is a great leveller know what they’re talking about. On the Sunday, I was at Bellerive, playing for Tassie against WA in a Mercantile Mutual one-dayer, and this time I made it to 10 when we batted. I tried to cover-drive Brendon Julian on the up but hit a catch to Damien Martyn, my Australia A captain, at cover. ‘Take that to New Zealand with you,’ Martyn sneered at me as I began the long walk back to the pavilion.
Twenty-four hours later, I was on the plane to Wellington, wearing a blazer with a very similar crest to the one on the blazer Uncle Greg wore to England in 1989, sitting in the same block of seats as some of the biggest names in Australian cricket. It was a happy time. The guys had just retained the Ashes pretty emphatically and their partners and children had all come along too. Mark Taylor was accompanied not just by his wife Judi and son William, but also their new baby Jack, who was less than two weeks old when he set off on his first overseas trip.
I wasn’t too intimidated by the whole experience. In a way I had been preparing for it all my life and I had already met most of the guys on the plane somewhere in my travels. Initially, I stuck close to the blokes from the Australia A team, such as Grew Blewett and ‘Pistol’ Reiffel, but of course I knew Warnie, Boonie and Glenn McGrath pretty well and a guy I found I had plenty in common with was Mark Waugh, who loves talking racing, particularly harness racing. A day out at the Dunedin Golf Club, when I discovered that Blewey and I (the two youngest guys in the team) had the lowest handicaps, was an off-field highlight, not least for the way the senior guys reacted when Warnie claimed he played off 14. I heard the term ‘burglar’ whispered more than once before we teed off and then shouted by just about everyone after the wonder leggie walked away with all our prizemoney. The vibe through the group was terrific. When I look back on that short tour — indeed, on my first couple of seasons in the Australian set-up — I can’t help but think how lucky I was to start my career as a junior member of a team on the rise.
I played in all four of our games, batting six against South Africa and New Zealand (scoring 1 and then 10 not out) but being promoted to first-drop for the game against India, when I made 62 from 92 deliveries. It wasn’t the most flamboyant dig of my life, but at the time I felt it was one of the most important because I made this half-century in a fair-dinkum one-day international (remember the Australia A games weren’t granted full status) in front of men whose respect I craved. Every time one of them said, ‘Well played,’ I felt even more important. In the final I was back at No. 6 and I walked to the wicket with us needing 17 to win and more than 20 overs available in which to get them. David Boon was at the other end and he challenged me to be with him at the end, two Swampies together. I was 7 not out when we sealed our six-wicket victory, and after the presentation, back in our dressing room, Boonie led us in a triumphal singing of our team anthem, ‘Underneath the Southern Cross’, which only happened after a victory in a Test match or a one-day series. As I looked around the room I saw how much it meant to them — even for a minor tournament like this (though, of course, it was miles from ‘minor’ for me). An amazing rush of pride and humility dashed through me, and, cheesy as it sounds, I really did feel I was the luckiest bloke in the world.
THE REASON FOR MY selection for that New Zealand trip became clear near the end of the tour when the Australian side for the upcoming Test and ODI tour of the West Indies was announced. The final two batting places went to Justin Langer and me, so I had to assume that I’d been given the Kiwi experience as an entrée to the Caribbean main course. I had enjoyed another pretty successful summer with Tasmania, averaging 75 in the Shield and scoring my first double century — an innings of 211 against WA that occupied seven hours and 20 minutes. It was my fifth straight first-class hundred against WA, dating back to the twin hundreds I scored against them at Bellerive in March 1993. I always liked playing against the Western Australians, loved batting on the bouncy Perth pitch, and enjoyed their competitive nature, the way they were always up for the fight. Guys like Damien Martyn and Lang encapsulated this spirit.
Other highlights of 1994–95 for me were an innings of 82 from 86 balls for an ACB Chairman’s XI in the opening game of England’s Ashes tour, played at Lilac Hill in Perth, and my selection in the Australian XI side that played England in Hobart a week before the start of the Ashes series. The critics described the team as a virtual shadow Test team and the fact the game was staged in my home state meant I felt extra nervous during the lead-up. No way could I get to sleep the night before the game, even though I stayed out with quite a few of the guys for a couple of beers. Next morning, I was up early, worked extra hard in warm-ups, and when we batted I got to 71, enjoying a good partnership with Marto.
I