Is it time for Ponting to step down as captain?

 

Roar Guru

By Sarah, 13 Nov 2009 The Crowd is a Roar Guru

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 Australian Cricket, Cricket, Michael Clarke, Ricky Ponting, The Ashes

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Ricky Ponting. AAP Image

Any self-respecting Australian cricket fan will understand that the pain of losing yet another Ashes series doesn’t just go away over night. In fact, it’s the type of pain that likes to linger around for a while.

Even when you’re not thinking about it, you still feel that numb, dulling ache.

Ok, so I might be a little bit melodramatic, but after crucial tactical blunders in the 2008 tour of India and now the 2009 Ashes series in England (I won’t even mention 2005), Ricky Ponting’s reign at the top has now come into serious question.

And rightly so.

Somebody has to start asking the tough question: is it time for Ricky Ponting to step down as captain of Australia?

Now before you start shooting at me for a charge of treason against my fellow countrymen, I should clarify that I’m not just framing Ponting as the scapegoat in the loss of the Ashes.

I understand completely that cricket is after all, a team sport, but what I do have to emphasize is that in cricket, the captain’s role and responsibilities are perhaps more important and more influential than in any other sport.

During a match, the captain is the leader, the role model, the man who has to put the teams strategic planning of the opposition into effect.

He decides who will bowl, when they will bowl, and where the fielders will stand. He decides the batting order, decides whether his team will bat or bowl first based on pitch conditions and offers his players tactical advice.

A cricket captain must have excellent insight, good judgment, and a sharpness that allows him to read the game and be one step ahead of the opposition.

There is no doubting Ricky Ponting’s abilities as a cricketer.

In fact, he is Australia’s leading test run scorer of all time with a mammoth 11,345 runs, boasting an excellent average of 55.88, not to mention being third only behind Tendulkar and Lara in the leading run scorers of all time.

However, great players don’t necessarily make great captains.

Cricket is a game of statistics, and, on the surface Ricky Ponting’s record and stats as captain of Australia are actually quite impressive. He has captained Australia to thirty-nine test victories with eleven losses, and his record in the shorter form of the game is even better winning 140 games out of 192 as captain.

So you might be asking what my point in all of this is if the statistics are in favor of our current captain. Well, statistics sometimes hide the full story and don’t always paint an accurate picture.

Ponting had no easy boots to fill, following in the steps of Steve Waugh, who led Australia in remarkable era in Australian cricket. Steve Waugh holds the highest success rate of any Australian captain, with a 71.92% winning rate.

Now Steve Waugh had perhaps the greatest players we will ever see in our life time at his disposal in Glen McGrath, Shane Warne, Adam Gilchrist, as well as Justin Langer and Matthew Hayden.

However, Steve Waugh was a cricketing mastermind: dynamic and always willing to take a calculated risk. He was able to use each and every player to their full advantage and thus transformed his team into a formidable and unstoppable force.

He transformed the five day game with his attacking style of play and his depth and ability to read a cricket match, to react in the appropriate way when game conditions changed and to use the players he had to deliver the best results possible was the reason why Steve Waugh made a great captain.

Ricky Ponting at the beginning of his captaincy had the comfort of these experienced players from Waugh’s era but after most had retired by 2007 holes in Ponting’s captaincy began to appear. In the last five test series Australia has managed to win just two.

In addition to that, Australia’s position on the ICC world rankings has slipped from first to fourth since Ponting has taken over from Waugh.

It would be too harsh to claim that Ponting’s poor decision making was at first camouflaged by McGrath and Warne, whose expertise, experience and uncanny ability to bowl out the opposition was generally enough for Australia to win.

And taking into consideration the massive reshuffling of the side that saw young and largely inexperienced players thrust into the side, it’s not a simple equation that calls for the axing of the skipper. Rather Ponting has made on several occasions a series of bad decisions at very crucial moments which leads me to question his ability as the decision-maker especially when under pressure.

For example in the 2005 Ashes series in England he chose to bat first on a pitch he believed to contain a bit of life in it. England posted a mammoth total and Australia wasn’t able to come back from it.

On the Fourth Test of Australia’s tour of India for the 08/09 Border-Gavaskar Trophy Ponting made the decision to play part-time bowlers to compensate for his slow over rate.

As a result, Australia was not able to bowl out India, losing the game and consequently the series.

Similarly in the tour of England for the Ashes 09 series, in the fifth and deciding test at Lords, known for being a spin-friendly wicket, Ponting in close consultation with selectors opted to play a fourth seamer in Stuart Clarke, rather than specialist spinner Nathan Hauritz.

Again Australia could not bowl England out, losing the game and the series.

There are other factors that contributed to these losses, but in a game where momentum and strategy is everything, Ponting’s lack of vision in the game has cost Australia on three occasions.

Some players are born natural leaders, some are not.

As I have made clear, Ponting is one of the best players Australia will ever see, and certainly possibly the best batter since Bradman.

Perhaps it’s time Ricky concentrated on his batting and Australia injects new life into the captaincy with current vice-captain Michael Clarke, who clearly has demonstrated he has the thinking brain needed to be captain of Australia.

It may seem harsh, but someone has to ask the tough questions if Australia is to get back to the top of world cricket.