At the Close of Play. Ricky Ponting
games. I had a month to prepare for the Boxing Day Test and in that time I played in three ODIs, for scores of 5, 44 and 19 run out, a Shield match against Victoria in Hobart, where I managed 23 and 66, and a tour game against Pakistan (the third team in the World Series Cup) where I scored 35 and we won by an innings. Sure, none of this was special, but it wasn’t catastrophic either so I didn’t expect the bloke on the other end of the line to be chairman of selectors Trevor Hohns when I answered the phone at home a few days before Christmas.
When he told me I was out of both sides I was so stunned I didn’t say much. I certainly didn’t complain, but I didn’t ask any questions either. Matthew Elliott was hurt and Michael Bevan and I had been omitted, with Matthew Hayden, Steve Waugh (returning from injury) and Justin Langer coming into the side. Lang would bat at three, which might have given the best clue as to the team hierarchy’s thinking. I would come to learn that both Trevor and Mark Taylor were reasonably conservative in much of their cricket thinking, and I think their concept of the ideal No. 3 was a rock-solid type, what David Boon had given them for the previous few years. At this stage of his career, Lang was like that, whereas my natural instinct was to be more aggressive. Looking back, given the attacking way I played when I was 21, I probably needed to score a lot more runs than what I did at that time to keep the spot for long. But the truth is I didn’t know then why I was dropped, because they never told me, and I still don’t know now. I was never told anything specific about my original promotion up the order — it just seemed like a logical progression — or why I was abandoned so quickly. If they thought I had weaknesses in my technique or my character, why did they move me to the most important position in the batting order in the first place?
Almost immediately after Trevor’s phone call, Mum and Dad took me out to the golf club, in part because they thought we’d escape the local media there. It was good to get out of the house but Launceston is not that big a city and the reporters were waiting behind the ninth green. Over the years, journos learned that if they wanted to find me the golf course was the best place to look. This time, I think I handled it okay and they were sympathetic with their questions, but it was almost bizarre as I watched them walk away. I felt like calling out to them, Don’t forget about me!
One of the things that nagged at me was that I had been keen to bat at three when Tubby offered me the opportunity. But maybe I signed my ‘death warrant’ when I took on the challenge. Perhaps it would have been smarter to stay at six to give me more time to settle into Test cricket. Boonie had told me I should bat down the order for a couple of years, had even made me bat at four in that Shield game after the second Test, and maybe I should have listened to him. In fact, a lot of thoughts spun through my head, none of them pretty, all of them amplified because I hadn’t seen the sack coming. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t quite sure how to feel … sorry for myself … determined to get back … embarrassed … distraught … all of the above …
All I ever wanted to do was play for Australia … and now I’ve blown it.
Am I ever going to play Test cricket again?
In the end, after only a couple of days, I said to myself, ‘I’m going to get myself back in the team that quick it’s not funny. I’m going to go back to state cricket and get a hundred every time I bat. I’ll train so hard they’ll have to pick me again.’
IF YOU LOOK AT MY SCORES in the Shield for the rest of the 1996–97 season, you’d think it took me a while to rediscover my form. But I actually felt good from my very first innings in January, when we played Victoria at the MCG. I went out with the intention of batting all day and reasonably quickly I felt the ball hitting the middle of my bat. But when I was on 26 Tony Dodemaide, the veteran fast-medium bowler, suddenly got one to seam back sharply and I managed to get a faint nick through to the keeper. As I walked off after getting a ball like that I felt like I was the unluckiest cricketer on the planet, but in our second innings I made 94 not out, my knock ending only when Boonie declared in pursuit of an outright victory. Then came a frustrating fortnight, where I was hitting the ball beautifully in the nets but could only make 8 and 6 against WA at Bellerive and then 39 against SA in Adelaide. I thought the world was against me.
Trevor Hohns had told me to score heavily and if I wasn’t doing that, I knew I was no chance of making the upcoming Ashes tour. After that Shield game in Adelaide, I thought, This is not working. By ‘this’, I meant working my butt off. We finished early on day four and as soon as I could I booked a short holiday to the Gold Coast. For the next three or four days I didn’t think about cricket and I left it as late as possible to get back to Hobart for our next match. When I did get home, I only had time for a couple of training sessions and then I immediately scored a hundred in each innings against South Australia at Bellerive.
I actually learned a lot about myself and what was best for me during this time. Hitting a million balls a day and training as hard as possible was not always the solution, especially if I felt I had to do it. Sure, I’d spent a lot of time in the nets before this but I’d never forced myself to go, to do even more, as if that was the only answer. When things weren’t working, I was better off trying to freshen up mentally, and the best way to do that was forget about the pressures of the game. I learned there is a difference between letting it happen and forcing it, in trusting my skills rather than searching for something more.
The other thing that was crucial for me at this time was the support I received from Tasmanian coach Greg Shipperd. When I was working hard at practice, hitting ball after ball, he was always in my corner. He also offered what proved to be a critical piece of advice. My confidence had taken a hit, and Shippy was convinced I’d got into the habit of trying to hit my way out of trouble when things grew difficult. Of course, every batsman has rough spots during an innings of any length, especially if you bat near the top of the order and the pitch is offering some assistance to the bowler, but my brain was getting cluttered when this happened to me.
In the first innings against SA, I scored 126 out of 248. Then Jamie Siddons, the SA captain, made a very positive declaration on the final day, which gave me the opportunity to produce an even better effort than my first dig. We had to win to keep our Shield chances alive and I was in at 2–52 as we chased 349 to win. Four hours later, we’d achieved a terrific victory and I had played an important part, finishing 145 not out. Selectors love match-winning hundreds, but even more important than that I’d been intimately involved in a special team victory, which reminded me of just what a great game cricket can be. In all the stress of losing and then trying to revive my international career, I’d forgotten a little of that.
I made another big hundred in our next Shield game, against Queensland and finished the season with scores of 64 and 22 against NSW at the SCG. It was time to wait for the Ashes touring party to be named. I went through all the options available and realised that even with my big finish to the season, I was hardly a sure pick. The Test team had won the home series against the West Indies 3–2 before heading to South Africa, where it was in the process of claiming a hard-fought three-game series 2–1. However, question marks were hovering over the batting order, with Mark Taylor completely out of form and none of the excellent batsmen from my generation on the tour — Matthew Elliott, Michael Bevan, Greg Blewett, Matthew Hayden and Justin Langer — having cemented their spots. But none of them had cruelled their chances completely either. The media in Sydney was campaigning for Michael Slater to be recalled, while it was certain that Adam Gilchrist, who had enjoyed a fantastic season with bat and wicketkeeping gloves for WA before flying to South Africa to bolster the ODI line-up, would be Ian Healy’s back-up. What if the selectors looked upon Gilly as a batsman too, and decided to take an extra bowler? What if they decided to look for experience, and opt for either of the Shield’s leading run-scorers for the season — Tasmania’s Jamie Cox or Darren Lehmann of South Australia — or Stuart Law, who was still playing one-day internationals but who hadn’t appeared in a Test match again since we debuted in the same game.
In the end, I think I was very lucky. Looking at the make-up of the squad now, it was top heavy with batting talent. Bevo was picked as the second spinner and Gilly as the second keeper, but the selectors still chose eight more specialist batsmen: Taylor, the two Waughs, Elliott, Blewett, Slater, Langer … and Ponting. I’ve always wondered, but I’ve never been game to ask, if that request Trevor