At the Close of Play. Ricky Ponting
Not long after I landed in Perth, captain Mark Taylor reminded me I was a naturally aggressive batsman and fielder. ‘I want you to add some spice to the side,’ he said. ‘And don’t go away from the style of cricket that got you into the team. It’s worked for you in the past and it will work for you here.’
I was actually one of three newcomers, with Michael Kasprowicz (for the injured Paul Reiffel) also coming into the 12-man squad, the likelihood being that Kasper would be 12th man, with me batting at five, one place lower than I’d been batting for Tasmania, and Stuart Law at six.
We flew to Perth on the Tuesday, three days before the Test was due to begin, but I honestly can’t remember feeling particularly nervous, at least until the day of the game. I guess the fact I’d been with the guys in New Zealand and the West Indies helped me, plus the fact that I’d also come into contact with a number of the players at the Academy, or with the Australia A team in 1994–95 or on the Young Australia tour. It’s funny thinking back, but while my memories of the actual game remain strong I recall very little of the build-up — except for my constant modelling of my very own baggy green cap in front of the mirror and the fact I took the stickers off my bats, sanded the blades down and then re-stickered them all and put new grips on the handles. I also knew the occasion was special because my parents, as well as Nan and Uncle John (Mum’s brother) and Aunt Anna Campbell flew over. Since he retired from cricket, I could count on two hands the number of times Dad had given up his Saturday golf to watch me play, and he’s never been a bloke to move too far away from his comfort zone unless he has a good reason to, but here he was in Perth, a long, long way from home. Pop, however, was too set in his ways to fly all the way to Western Australia.
I do remember going out and buying an alarm clock, to complement the clock-radio next to my bed at the hotel, and the two wake-up calls I organised and the early-morning call from Mum and Dad, all to make sure I wasn’t late for a day’s play. No way was I earning the wrath of Boonie or Shippy again.
HAVING SAFELY GOT TO the ground on time, we bowled first after Tubby lost the toss, which gave me a day to ‘settle in’ and also meant I could prove that, as a fielder at least, Test cricket was not going to be a problem for me. More often that not in those days, almost as a rite of initiation, the youngest member of a Shield or Test team became the short-leg specialist (rarely a favourite fielding position for cricketers at any level), and I’d fielded there a few times for Tasmania in the previous couple of years, but Boonie had made that position his own for the Australian team, so I was allowed to patrol the covers, which gave me a chance to burn off some of the nervous energy that was surging through me.
On day two, Michael Slater scored a big century, he and Mark Taylor added 228 before our first wicket fell, not long before tea. I went looking for my box and thigh pad. Boonie was controversially given out just before the drinks break in the last session, so I went and quickly put my pads on and then, as the last hour was played out, I grew more and more fidgety, going to the toilet more than once but never for long. Out in the middle, Slats and Mark Waugh looked rock solid on what had become a perfect batting wicket, while Tubby saw I was getting very edgy, to the point that 10 or 15 minutes before stumps he asked Ian Healy to pad up as nightwatchman if a wicket unexpectedly fell. The move proved unnecessary; my first Test innings would have to wait another day.
I was shattered when I got back to our hotel — it had been a long day, even though I’d never got a chance to bat. (I always found it very difficult having to wait so long to have a hit, and didn’t have much practice at it as I rarely batted as low as No. 5 in a first-class game; having to adjust to sometimes waiting around for ages before I got a bat was one of the hardest things I had to do in my early days as a Test cricketer.) I went out for dinner that night with Mum and Dad, and in their company I felt reasonably relaxed. My sister Renee had called from home to say she had scored 48 Stableford points while playing for Mowbray Golf Club against Devonport GC in a competition known as the ‘Church Cup’ — a colossal effort which would take three shots from her handicap — and it appeared our parents were just as proud about her achievement as they were in me playing a Test match. Mum insisted on an early night, but when I went to bed there was no way I could get to sleep. The strange thing was that whereas in the days leading up to the game I’d been picturing myself doing something positive, playing a big shot, even making a hundred, now I was a fatalist — picturing myself getting out for a duck, run out without facing a ball, or maybe I wouldn’t get a bat at all, then get left out of the side when Tugga came back and never play for Australia again. When I woke the next morning I felt as if I hadn’t slept a minute, but at the ground I was a lot calmer than I’d been the previous evening and I hit the ball pretty well in the nets before play.
Slats was 189 not out at the start of the day, and there was some talk among the team about him having a shot at Brian Lara’s then world record Test score of 375, but in the first hour, totally out of the blue, he drove at Sri Lanka’s spinner Muttiah Muralitharan and hit an easy catch straight back to the bowler. Just like that, he was out for 219, Australia 3–422.
I DON’T REMEMBER WALKING out to bat, taking guard or talking to my batting partner, Mark Waugh, before I faced my opening delivery. However, I do recall that from early in my innings I was batting in my cap (rather than a helmet) and I will never forget the first ball I faced in Test cricket … a well-flighted delivery from ‘Murali’ that did me fractionally for length as I moved down the wicket. I pushed firmly at the ball but it held its line and clipped the outside edge of my bat … and for a fateful second I thought my Test career might be over as soon as it had begun. Fortunately, I’d got just enough bat on it for it to shoot past first slip’s hand and down to the fence for four, which took away the possibility of a duck on debut and slowed my heartbeat a little. In fact, it calmed me down a lot — it doesn’t matter whether you’re batting in a Test match or in the park, if you nick your first delivery and it goes to the boundary you feel lucky, like it might be your day.
For the next four hours, it looked like it was going to be mine.
Initially, I was a little scratchy, but then they dropped one short at me and I belted it through mid-wicket for four. Middling that pull shot was what I needed; it was as if I shifted into a higher gear. From that point on, my feet moved naturally into position, I had time to play my strokes and my shot selection was usually on the money. I’d batted at the WACA a couple of times before and loved the extra bounce in the wicket and the way the ball came on to the bat, and the light, too, which seems to make the ball easy to pick up. All I focused on was ‘watching the ball’, a mantra I repeated to myself before every delivery, the way Ian Young had told me to do. Being out there with Mark, who always made batting look easy and was a brilliant judge of a run, helped me enormously and then, when he was out for 111 to make our score 4–496 Stuart Law came out. Two of us out there in our first Test. He started very nervously, which in a slightly weird way was good for me as well, because suddenly I felt like the senior partner instead of the rookie.
When I reached my half-century, I looked straight away for my family in the crowd, especially for Mum, and I pointed my Kookaburra in her direction. It was a very satisfying feeling getting to fifty, because I knew — even with Steve Waugh coming back into the team and Stuey now looking comfortable — that I’d get another game. Now, I just wanted to enjoy it. We were already more than 200 in front, so I knew a declaration was coming sooner or later, certainly before stumps, but Tubby never sent a message saying I had a set amount of time to try to get a hundred. So we just kept going.
It was only when I moved into the 80s that I really thought the ton was on. By that point, the way Stuey and I were going through the last session of the day, he’d get to a half-century and I’d make three figures about half an hour before stumps, and that seemed a logical time for a closure. But it wasn’t to be. Sri Lanka had just taken the third new ball and I was on 96 when left-arm paceman Chaminda Vaas got one to cut back and hit me above my back pad — closer to my knee than groin. They did appeal, quite loudly considering how much it had bounced and the state of play, while I panicked for that split-second after I was hit (as a batsman always does as a reflex when hit on the leg anywhere near the stumps), but I quickly calmed down when I realised the ball was clearing the stumps. Nothing to worry about.
Then, Khizar Hayat, the umpire from Pakistan, gave