At the Close of Play. Ricky Ponting
during this tour, recalled how Marshall had whispered to him at the non-striker’s end during his Test debut, ‘Are you going to get out, or am I going to have to kill you?’ Mark Taylor, Craig McDermott, Mark Waugh and Ian Healy had similar stories, so it was hardly surprising that the senior blokes backed Steve’s call to stand up to them this time. We were going to, as old footballers like to say, ‘Retaliate first!’
Part of this process was to have our quicks bowling plenty of short stuff in the nets, as a rehearsal for what they’d be doing in the Tests and to get the batsmen used to the reprisals they’d be copping from the Windies’ quicks. This helped me, I think, because I was never shy about playing the hook and pull shots. I desperately wanted the leadership to believe I deserved to be on the tour, and whenever Tubby or Steve or Bob Simpson complimented me on the way I handled the short deliveries I felt I was on the way to achieving that.
With Greg Blewett established in the Test line-up at No. 6 (he’d scored centuries in each of his first two Tests at the end of the 1994–95 Ashes series), Justin Langer and I realised we were the two ‘extra’ batsmen in the squad. Rather than let this situation get us down, we made a pact in Bridgetown, in the early days of the tour, that however much we enjoyed ourselves off the field, when it was training time we’d work tenaciously hard. It was on this tour that I came to realise how hard I needed to work if I wanted to become a very good international player. Justin and I were able to watch how the accomplished players prepared themselves for games, what routines they kept, even little things like what they did as they waited to bat. No two blokes were exactly alike; what I had to do was watch what they were doing, work out why they were doing it and then decide what was best for me.
As it turned out, I made little impact on the actual field of play, chiefly because I had few opportunities. I appeared in the third and fifth ODIs, one other limited-overs game and one three-day tour game, and in all three of the 50-over games we played in Bermuda at the trip’s end. I knew, going in, that unless there were injuries I was very unlikely to play in a Test, though I would have loved to have made at least one big score.
I was unlucky in one respect, as an agonising bout of food poisoning in St Kitts forced me out of the three-day game against a West Indies Cricket Board XI that was played between the second and third Tests. On the evening before the game, we’d been invited to one of the island’s finest seafood restaurants, but while everyone else went for the lobster or one of the succulent fish dishes, I chose the ‘conch chowder’ and paid the price, spending all night and most of the following day throwing up at regular intervals. My best innings on the tour was the 43 I scored in the ODI at Port-of-Spain; my only half-century came in the last game before we flew home.
I was pretty disappointed about getting sick as there was an outside chance in that tour game I could press my case for a Test place. I had never been on a tour before where you did nothing and it was a steep learning curve. One of the things that is important on a tour is not to have guys weighing down others. When you get picked or are in the team and struggling to make an impact it is important to stay positive. Self-indulgence is something of a crime and there are many blokes who have had their cards marked as bad tourists and possibly missed the chance of being in the squad because they became a liability. Later, when I was captain, one of the things I would tell every new player coming into the squad was that it was the job of the 12th, 13th or 14th man to keep everybody happy and to bring some energy to the group. If you weren’t playing that was your role. Back then David Boon was a great help to me when he saw how upset I was to miss the tour game, telling me to keep my spirits up and to ensure I used the opportunity to learn as much as I could about being part of the squad. I was so fortunate to have him around. He was one of my people, we had played footy for the same club and he was just a typical Launceston bloke. He never had much to say, but when he did it was worth listening to; his humour was dry and devastating. He adopted me in those early days and had a lot of positive things to say about my future. When he released his autobiography Boonie wrote a small piece suggesting I would make more Test runs than him. He had a lot of nice things to say, but couldn’t help sledging me about the fact he and Shaun Young had been driving me around for years and I still didn’t have a licence. Oh, and he couldn’t help but bring up his bowling performance against me that summer. ‘The only thing Ricky Ponting fears on a cricket field is facing my bowling. The thought of losing his wicket to me obviously has him petrified.’ I suppose I had that one coming.
AT THE START OF THE TOUR, most of the boys were still calling me ‘Pont’ or ‘Ponts’ but eventually Warnie got his way and I became Punter, the nickname that will never leave me. I guess my actions on our very first day in the Caribbean might have hastened this evolution, as Mark Waugh and I skipped a fancy lunch so we could get to the races in time for the first. It was Barbados Cup day, an event we believed needed to be savoured in its entirety, so we were on our way to the track as soon as we’d collected our first tour allowance. If we wanted an early introduction to Caribbean culture, this was perfect. There was plenty of calypso, a sea of colour and a strong bouquet of rum that wafted over proceedings. I loved being able to stand back and watch the locals with Tugga and Warnie, who joined us during the afternoon and we were immediately feted like rock stars. I couldn’t help but be impressed by how nice and friendly everyone was to us. When the cricket started, however, the locals proved to be not so friendly. The next morning, we played our opening game and the first ball was a beamer to Michael Slater, which nearly decapitated him, and the third was a vicious riser that ballooned off his glove to first slip.
The short stuff would continue throughout the Test series, but just as the boys had promised they stood up to every single bumper, while our pace attack, spearheaded by Glenn McGrath, gave at least as good as we received. The way Pigeon took them on was magnificent and the positive body language of all the boys was so impressive — it seemed to intimidate the West Indies players, which was almost stunning given the manner in which they’d steamrollered all challengers over the previous 15 years or more. When we won the Frank Worrell Trophy in Jamaica our dressing room was filled with TV cameras and reporters and they were allowed to stay to do their interviews while the room was doused in beer and champagne and some of the worst renditions of Cold Chisel’s ‘Khe Sanh’ ever heard were telecast via satellite back to Australia. Eventually, though, everyone except those in or very close to the team were asked to leave, we formed a tight circle, and Boonie led us in a rendition of our anthem that literally had the hairs on the back of my neck standing to attention. Even though I didn’t play in the series I still felt part of it all. In the years that followed, there would be some rousing renditions of ‘Underneath the Southern Cross’— I’d even get to lead the team in a few — but I’m not sure any had the raw emotion of this one.
That night, we ended up at a hotel next door to the one where we were staying, but most of the guys stayed in their whites and along with a few past players — Allan Border, Dean Jones, Geoff Lawson and David Hookes — who had been savaged by the West Indies in the past, we sat on deck chairs, glasses never empty, and talked about how good it was to win. I hardly said a word, just took it all in. In the years that followed, all the senior guys on this tour would talk about how their memories of the losses they suffered in the 1980s and early 1990s acted as a spur to keep going when the team started winning consistently; how it taught them to be relentless. Coming later as I did, I never experienced those painful setbacks, but I saw how much winning in the Windies in 1995 meant to the older guys. It was a lesson I never forgot.
THE TWO MONTHS WAS an education for me in other ways, too. Rooming with Steve Waugh, for example, meant I could grill him on how he approached Test cricket. Tugga was a cricketer who had thought deeply about the mental challenges of batting against giants like Ambrose and Walsh, and he was also happy to talk about his struggles at the start of his international career, like how he coped with not scoring his first Test hundred until his 27th Test. It wasn’t that he was trying to scare me; more that he wanted to stress that success wasn’t going to come easily. If I persisted, he explained, I was a chance for a long career.
After Steve, I ‘bunked’ with Tim May, which was a completely different assignment. Maysie was not in the Test XI and had made the assessment that with the team going well that situation was unlikely to change, so he set out to enjoy the tour as much as possible. What was most remarkable was his rare ability to turn up at breakfast seemingly as bright