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| Thanks Ricky! Adieu to a true champion |
"Ponting Poyada" ("Ponting's gone"). Dad yelled at me from the living room. I think this was 2001 and I think this was THAT series in India. Ponting wasn’t anyway in great form coming to India, having just finished a patchy Test series against the West Indies at home. But you could never doubt Ponting back then. Not after he had made mincemeat of the Indian attack in 1999-2000 in Australia. People did remember that. Atleast Dad did. So his joy when he was dismissed wasn’t misplaced. This would go on to happen again and again over the next few years (not surprisingly coinciding with Ponting's Golden Era). This would happen every time I wasn’t watching an Ind-Aus match with my father. He would yell from the living room so that I would come and watch with him. Or more recently, after I moved out of home, he would call me and tell me so that I would switch the TV on. That probably shows how dreaded he was in India. He might not be as worshipped as Tendulkar nor as admired as Lara but dreaded he was. If Indians switched their TVs off after Tendulkar got out, they did the opposite when Ponting was dismissed. That stands testimony to the way Ponting had flayed the Indian attack over the years. FEAR.
But my earliest Ponting memory isn’t that. It’s an image. In fact, all my Ponting memories are clouded by a few images, the earliest one being the gum-chewing lad with the goatee of the mid-90s in the Wills World Cup 1996. For a ten-year-old, he looked eerily similar to his teammate Stuart Law, and hence not someone you would worry about much. How wrong was I! From that, to the slip-fielder who brought an end to Pakistan's misery in the 1999 WC final. I think he caught Saqlain Mushtaq off Mcgrath to end Pakistan's horrendous batting display. And the catch, well you could almost see the ball going into Ponting's hands before it actually did! Yes you could. Then, the dismissal that I talked about in the opening line,poking and proding against Harbhajan & Co. I think he got some 17 runs in the 3-match Test series. That image stuck for some time. 2 years. Yeah! Exactly 2 years. Come March 23, 2003, Ponting tore into the Indian bowling attack in the 2003 WC final. The image I am talking about was a savage six off Javagal Srinath. He butchered Srinath & Co that day. There couldn’t be a better use for that word. Butchered. For me, that image was synonymous with Ponting's Golden Era. An era between 2 World Cups when he hit 33 international hundreds(including 3 doubles). In the same period, Lara, inspite of the 400* and a couple of doubles, had become very inconsistent and finally hung his boots in 2006. Tendulkar, you felt was left soul-searching after what happened in the 2003 WC Final. Also, time was when tennis elbow struck and Tendulkar was redefining his role in the team. And Ponting? Ponting was, by far, the best batsman in the world in that period. I remember waking up early in the morning during the 2003-04 series and thinking, “ God! Will have to watch Ponting pull over and over again all the day.” ENVY.
For about 4 years between 2003 and 2007, Ponting dominated world cricket. One had, by now, started hearing stories about the teenage batsman who would draw crowds who came just to watch him bat against the bowling machine. When playing Australia, you knew which wicket was most important, you knew that if Ponting got in, you would mostly end up playing catch-up in the match. Of course, having names like Mathew Hayden and Adam Gilchrist right above him helped, but you would back Ponting even when the score read something like 40/3. You would fear he would get a counter-attacking hundred and turn the match upside-down. You would always feel nailing Ponting would be difficult. You always knew Ponting would be TOUGH. But hey, Australian cricketers have always been tough and that was a definite pointer to the Australian domestic set-up. Ponting, like his peers, had been toughened by it and knew that he had to put a price on his wicket; the price of the wicket an Australian batsman as Ed Smith points out here.
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| Sydney 2008 : Forgettable |
The next image would coincide with the beginning of Ponting's downward journey, if I can dare call it one: Ponting signalling to umpire Mark Benson that Sourav Ganguly was out. And he did that like an umpire. From that to Bangalore 2010, appealing for a clear bump 'catch' off Tendulkar. Clearly, here was a man struggling to come to terms with the legacy that he would leave behind. A man who couldn’t accept the fact that he couldn’t win anymore at will. You could forgive him for that. Inspite of having been his era's best batsman alongside Tendulkar and Lara, he was questioned. Questioned by lesser mortals, as in that press-conference when he got into an altercation with the scribes. These images too would stay in my mind whenever I think of Ponting. HATE.
But then you couldn’t define a player like Ponting with just images. Images wouldn’t do justice for the fear that he instilled in the opposition camp. Images wouldn’t talk about how he would dominate bowlers. Images definitely wouldn’t tell you how hard he struggled to arrest the slide of the Australian team after all his contemporaries left. Images wouldn’t anyway bother about the pain of a lonely champion left in a not-so-champion side. Images after all are images and do not tell you about the legacy. The Ponting Legacy.
Talking about which, you actually wonder: What exactly would be Ponting's legacy? Would it be of the champion who won 3 ODI World Cups? Or would it be the captain who surrendered 3 Ashes, that too coming after Australia had dominated England for 16 years? I would say that its pretty unfair to juxtapose Ponting the batsman and Ponting the captain. Would your opinion on Tendulkar be coloured by his captain years? I would guess not. It’s only because Ponting's failures as captain came immediately after Australia's unbeatable run. That did make his failures starker. While Tendulkar's failures as captain drowned in the sea of India's overall mediocrity, Ponting's failures were highlighted due to Australia's general invincibility.
If you would bother to take Ponting the Captain out of the equation, Ponting the Batsman still remains great and with a rich legacy, without an iota of doubt. A legacy of never giving up, one of dominating the bowlers, one of absolutely beautiful batting. A legacy he needn’t worry about. He took the torch of Australian batsmanship from Mark Waugh and seems to have handed it over to Michael Clarke. That's the legacy that Ponting would leave behind. And in between all this, you tend to forget Ponting the Fielder, one of the best of his time. It only shows how great a bat he was, that you took his fielding just for granted.
As he was announcing his retirement last week, I knew that now all the Ponting-baiters would have only niceties to say. But I would still say that Ponting was wrong for what he did in Sydney 2008 and later in Bangalore 2010. But then again, that would not colour my opinion that Ponting the Batsman was truly a Legend. And as I am writing this, Smith & Co have just given a guard of honour for Ponting. That should say volumes for what opponents thought of him. If I was earlier talking about him instilling fear in the opposition camp, this was different. This was RESPECT. And respect from the South Africans. Not many people get that. RESPECT.
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| The final stroll to the middle : Smith's extraordinary gesture |
Respect for Ponting the Player. A Legend.
And yes, Dad did call me in the evening and said, "Ponting Poyada!" and I knew he didn’t mean it the way he used to.
