At the Close of Play. Ricky Ponting
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My cricket journey has been long and fulfilling. From my earliest days playing school and grade cricket right through to my last game in August 2013 in the Caribbean, I’ve enjoyed so many highs and my fair share of lows. I’ve developed lifelong friendships, been to some of the most amazing places and had the honour to captain my country. I’ve played with and against childhood idols, on all the great cricket grounds around the world, and mingled with royalty as well as the poorest of the poor. But for all these great opportunities and happenings, I’ve always tried to stay as grounded and as true as possible to myself, my family and my team-mates in everything that I’ve done.
I’ve always tried to be thinking of other people and doing what I could do to support them, of how my team-mates could improve, do better or enjoy their cricket more, as well as observing what their strengths are and how they could make them even better, plus what their weaknesses are and what I could do to help them both on and off the field. I worked really hard at this support, especially when we were on the road, when we could spend more time together.
Stepping back and looking at those around you and working out what you can do to help them is something all cricket captains, leaders or business people should do regularly. You’re only as good as the team around you.
I ANSWERED THE PHONE at home a few days before Christmas. As soon as he said, ‘G’day Ricky, Trevor Hohns,’ I knew I was in trouble. It had become a standard quip among the players that the only time we heard from Trevor was when he called to say you’d been dropped.
‘We want you to go back to Shield cricket and score a hell of a lot of runs,’ he said. I was out of the Test side and the one-day squad too.
As early Christmas gifts went, this wasn’t one of the best I’d ever received.
My manager Sam Halvorsen, a Hobart-based businessman who’d been looking after me since Greg Shipperd introduced me to him in late 1994, had negotiated a number of sponsorship deals and was telling me that I was very much in demand — well, at least I was in Tasmania. All I’d done from mid-March to mid-July was keep myself fit, work on my golf handicap, raced a couple of greyhounds and had some fun. In July, I travelled to Kuala Lumpur to play for Australia in a Super 8s event and soon after that I was in Cairns and Townsville playing for Tassie in a similar tournament involving all six Sheffield Shield teams. Life was good.
I was just 22 years old and batting at three for Australia. I’d filled that position throughout the World Cup earlier in the year and with David Boon retired from international cricket I took his spot at first drop for a one-off Test against India.
After just three Tests at No. 3, I was out of favour and out of the team, confused and a little angry with the way I’d been treated. I wasn’t really sure why I’d been cast aside so quickly and still don’t know why. Some people wanted to assume it was for reasons other than cricket, but I’d done nothing to deserve that. I’ve always wondered if they were trying to teach me some sort of lesson, as if that’s the way you’re supposed to treat young blokes who get to the top quicker than most. I got sick of the number of people who wanted to kindly tell me that everyone was dropped at some stage during their career: how Boonie was dropped; Allan Border was dropped; Mark Taylor was dropped; Steve Waugh was dropped; even Don Bradman was dropped. I nodded my head and replied that I was aware of that and that I would do all I could to fight my way back into the team, but the truth was I was in a bit of disarray. It wasn’t so much a question of whether I deserved the sack but that it had come out of the blue. For the first time in my life the confidence I’d always had in my cricket ability was shaken. If someone was trying to teach me a lesson, what was it?
Years later, when I was captain, I would push for a role as a selector because I believed I should always be in a position to tell a player why they had been dropped, or what the selectors were looking for. There were a few times when I was baffled by their decisions but had to keep that to myself as nothing was to be gained by making that public and nobody was going to change the selectors’ minds. In the year after I retired I saw batsmen rotate through the team like it was a game of musical chairs. I know what this sort of treatment does to the confidence of players and I found it hard to watch from a distance. If you’re looking over your shoulder thinking this innings could be your last then you’re adding a layer of unnecessary pressure when there’s enough of that around.
A FEW MONTHS EARLIER, in late August, we’d been in Sri Lanka for a one-day tour that was notable for the ever-present security that kept reminding us of the boycott controversy of six months before and for the fact Mark Taylor was not with us because of a back injury. Ian Healy was in charge and I thought he did a good job as both tactician and diplomat, with the tour being played out without a major incident. Heals wasn’t scared to try things, such as opening the bowling against Sri Lanka with medium pacers Steve Waugh and Stuart Law rather than the quicker Glenn McGrath and Damien Fleming on the basis that Jayasuriya and Kaluwitharana preferred the ball coming onto the bat, and he also made sure the newcomers to the squad, spinner Brad Hogg and paceman Jason Gillespie, had an opportunity to show us what they could do. We did enough to make the final of a tournament that also featured India, but lost the game that mattered, against Sri Lanka, by 30 runs.
The security was ultra-tight wherever we went, to the point that a ‘decoy bus’ was employed every time we were driven from our hotel to the ground. This, to me, was just bizarre. There were two buses that looked exactly the same, with curtains closed across all the windows, and the first bus would take off in one direction, while the second went the other way. First, I couldn’t help thinking that if someone was planning to attack our bus, we were playing a form of Russian roulette. And then I’d wonder: Why are we here? Is what we’re doing really that important? If we need to be protected this closely, doesn’t that mean something is not right?
Security-wise, touring the subcontinent went to another level after the 1996 World Cup, and it’s been that way — maybe even more so — ever since. For almost my entire career, it’s been awkward to venture outside the hotel. I was one of many Aussie cricketers on tour who spent most of my time in the hotel, drinking coffee or playing with my laptop. As the internet became more accessible, a few guys became prone to give their TAB accounts a workout, focusing on the races and footy back home. Soldiers or policemen carrying machine guns outside elevators, even sometimes outside individual rooms, became a customary sight. Guests were not allowed on floors other than their own, outsiders were kept away from the hotel lobby. For the 2011 World Cup, friends and family needed a special pass if they wanted to get through the hotel’s front door. It was life in a fishbowl and not always reassuring.
Being constantly under guard did wear me down from time to time, but I don’t think it’s shortened anyone’s career. No one ever came to me frazzled, to say, ‘I can’t cope with this anymore, I’m giving touring away.’ That thought never once occurred to me. Rather, a little incongruously, the guys who have retired in recent times have almost to a man kept returning to India to play Twenty20, pursue business opportunities and to seek help for their charities.
I guess, in the main, we became used to it.
A MONTH AFTER THE AUGUST 1996 Sri Lanka tour, we were in India for a tour involving one Test match and an ODI tournament also involving the home team and South Africa. I started promisingly, scoring 58 and 37 not out on a seaming deck in a three-day tour game at Patiala, but after that I struggled against the spinners on a succession of slow wickets. However, I wasn’t the only one to have an ordinary tour, which was reflected in our results: we didn’t win a game.
During the month we were in India, we criss-crossed the country, playing important games in some relatively minor cricket centres, covering way too many kilometres and staying in some ordinary hotels. It was one of my least enjoyable tours, and not just because I didn’t score many runs. To get from Delhi to Patiala and back, for example, we spent upwards of 13 hours on a poorly ventilated and minimally