At the Close of Play. Ricky Ponting
from when I first came into the Tasmanian team, I could observe him closely at training and in games and study the manner in which he made the bowlers come to him, how he would wait until the ball was in his area, and then he’d score his runs. ‘You have to know your game,’ he would say. ‘And try to stay out in the middle for as long as you can.’
I thought I knew what he meant when he advised me to ‘know my game’, but in fact I didn’t really get it for a few more years. And that last line might sound obvious, but in my early days in the Tassie team I often threw away a potential big score by trying to blaze away. A rapid-fire fifty might excite the fans, but Boonie knew it was big hundreds that win games and impress the selectors. After I scored my first ODI century, I really felt a part of the side, much more than I did after making 96 in my first Test. In cricket, the difference between two and three figures can be huge, even if it is a matter of two, three — or four — runs.
Unfortunately, my promotion to the Australian side coincided with Boonie’s fight to prolong his Test career. From afar, I’d seen the media pursue out-of-form stars in the past, great players like Allan Border, Merv Hughes, Dean Jones and Geoff Marsh. But that was when I was a spectator; now I got a whole new perspective on the situation. I was at a stage of my career where everything that was written about me was positive, so I was always keen to head to the sports pages. Boonie, about to turn 35 and — as far as some reporters were concerned — well past his use-by date, probably hadn’t read a paper in weeks, but he couldn’t avoid the whispers, the well-meaning advice to ‘ignore what they’re writing about you’, the negative tone of the journalists’ questions. Watching him in the nets, I wondered if he was working too hard, but there was no way a young pup like me was going to say anything. I saw how stoic he was in the dressing room at the WACA after he was fired by Khizar Hayat (I think I’d have flipped in the same situation) and I admired how he fought so hard in Melbourne to score 93 not out on the day Murali was no-balled by Darrell Hair. He went on to his final Test century the following day.
I also was taken by the way he handled his omission from the one-day squad, a decision announced straight after the Perth Test. The sacking of a long-time player always cuts at the psyche of a team, but there was no way Boonie was going to sulk or make it awkward for his mates; instead, as usual, he was one of the first guys down to the hotel bar to toast our Test victory before we headed back to Launceston — me to play golf with my brother, Drew, at Mowbray; Boonie to visit his wife Pip in hospital, where she was recovering from a minor operation. Of all the things on his mind, that was easily the one he was most concerned about.
I’ll never forget how good he was to me on that flight, despite all the turmoil that must have been spinning through his head. He told me how proud he was seeing a ‘fellow Swampie’ making runs in Test cricket, and how determined he was for the two of us to go to England together on the 1997 Ashes tour. It wasn’t to be. I think Boonie found it hard to adjust to being in the Test side but out of the one-day team, and when it became clear he wasn’t going to make the World Cup squad he pulled the pin. He told us at a team meeting just before the Adelaide Test, reading from notes he’d prepared so he got the words right, emphasising how much playing for Australia meant to him and how he had treasured the camaraderie he shared with his team-mates. For 30 seconds straight afterwards there was silence, before Tubby, Simmo and a few of the boys told Boonie how grateful they were to have shared the ride with him.
I didn’t say anything, not then anyway. It was a bit different for me, because Boonie was not so much my team-mate as my hero. One thing he kept saying was that he was very comfortable with his decision to retire, that it was the right time. Well, it might have been the correct call for him, but I’d had visions of playing a lot of Test cricket with David Boon. I wish I could have batted with him in a Test match. One part of my cricket dream was over almost as quickly as it had begun.
I WAS SEATED in an aisle seat for the first leg of our flight, from Sydney to Bangkok, next to Steve Waugh. Michael Slater, who’d been recalled to the squad, was sitting directly across from me, and he noticed me studying the flash Thai Airways International showbag.
‘It’s just toiletries, mate,’ he said helpfully. ‘Try the breath freshener.’
I unzipped the bag, went through the soap, toothpaste, breath freshener … no, that’s the shaving cream … deodorant. Finally, I found the breath freshener, but initially I was worried it might be an elaborate trap. What was Slats up to? I took the cap off the small bottle, and gave the button a gentle prod, so that just a smidgen of spray came out.
Hey, that’s not too bad, I thought to myself, as I nodded in Slats’s direction. Thai’s business class was so impressive I was beginning to think they’d be serving Tasmanian beer on the flight. Then I looked to my right and saw that rather than checking out what freebies might be on offer, Steve Waugh was intently studying the new laptop one of his sponsors had given him to help him type his next best-selling tour diary. He hadn’t heard what Slats and I had been talking about.
‘Hey Tugga, have you tried the breath freshener?’ I asked, as I passed a bottle over to him.
‘Thanks, mate,’ he replied, as he put the nozzle to his mouth and pushed hard.
But it wasn’t the breath freshener; it was the shaving cream. I’d done him beautifully. He spat the foam out all over his new laptop, muttered something about me being a ‘little prick’, and then had to call a flight attendant over to clean up the mess. Once that was done, he looked over at me and said, as seriously as he could, ‘Don’t worry, young fella. I’ve got a memory like an elephant.’
He has, too. But while I’m sure Steve would have tried to square the ledger at some point over the following six weeks — and with our first game cancelled he had plenty of time before our opening match — I don’t think he ever did.
AUSTRALIA’S RECORD IN WORLD CUPS prior to 1996 was hardly flash: winners in 1987; finalists in the inaugural Cup in 1975; but couldn’t get out of the first round in 1979, 1983 and 1992. Still, we thought we were a real chance this time, even if we were giving the other teams in our group (bar the West Indies, who also refused to go to Sri Lanka) a game start.
There was a sense of relief and anticipation among us when we finally set off for India, as if we were bidding farewell to the stresses and turmoil of the previous few weeks. In fact, once we landed, we’d be subject to a fair degree of hostility from the locals, who thought we’d overplayed our hand by choosing not to tour to Sri Lanka, but on the plane, at least, we felt far away from that.
THERE WERE ACTUALLY 13 DAYS between our arrival in Calcutta (now Kolkata) and our first game, against Kenya in Visakhapatnam. Those in the squad like Steve and Glenn McGrath, who like to explore, did venture out on occasions, but the high security that accompanied our every move made that even less inviting for blokes like me who aren’t into that sort of thing. As it was I lost a couple of days to a stomach bug and wasn’t going too far from the bathroom anyway, but when I was healthy I was jumping out of my skin at training, and this caused a bit of grief at one session where Errol Alcott had us working in pairs, one guy wearing boxing gloves and throwing punches while the other held up a circular pad to absorb the jabs. All was going well until I aimed a straight right but missed the pad and instead struck Paul Reiffel bang on the bridge of his nose. Fortunately, Pistol was stunned rather than hurt. He quickly told me I was a bloody idiot and then we got on with it.
The fact we were treated as ‘outcasts’ by critics in India helped galvanise the group, to the point that we could belt each other and still be good mates, and our spirits remained pretty high despite the days without on-field action. Interestingly, while some officials and a number of commentators seemed dirty on us, the local fans were mostly positive, and I was astonished by just how many of them squeezed into the ground floor at our hotels — not to harass us, just to wish us all the best and, hopefully, to nab a prized autograph or photograph. Over the years of playing in India this is something I have noticed. The media can be tearing you limb from