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Ponting: A trust repaid or a trust betrayed?

19th September, 2010
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Roar Guru
19th September, 2010
41
1748 Reads

Ricky PontingThe Australian cricket team would have flown out to India as you read this. Josh Hazelwood has been replaced by Mitchell Starc and the Victorian, James Pattinson, is on standby. Astute readers will remember these two players mentioned as possibilities a month ago.

Bollinger and Michael Hussey are in South Africa playing the Champions League and will join the team next week.

The team plays its only warm-up match at Chandigarh between September 25 and 27. The Test will be played at Mohali, on the outskirts of Chandigarh on October 1.

I was born in Patiala which is just 100 kilometers from Chandigarh and the weather in October ranges from a low of 19 to a maximum of 28. It is autumn and the weather will be ‘heavy’ most mornings. There will be a little swing but almost no seam.

Ricky Ponting is excited about looking horns with the number one ranked Test team. Ponting is a scrapper and has many points to prove and all these centre around his captaincy and batting form.

Ricky Ponting is coming to terms with an administration seemingly more intent on appearances and ‘marketability factors’ than ground reality. There is a working relationship based on convenience. There is neither trust nor mistrust. Just a wary acceptance of the need to work together.

To dismiss Ponting’s captaincy as lacking tactical sensitivity is to ignore the logic of collective leadership. Great teams have multiple leaders and Ponting’s young charges are still defining the boundaries of their talents.

These young men will develop just as McGrath and Gilchrist did. Then Ponting will be able to throw the ball to Johnson or Siddle and trust them to deliver.

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Ponting’s batting and fielding sets him apart as a great player and history may well judge him as a great captain. He is, after all, statistically the most “winning” captain in the history of Test cricket.

No Australian captain has been subject to more scrutiny than Ponting. He has been pilloried for his two Ashes losses in 2005 and 2009. He has been criticised for his failure in India in 2008.

He has been slated for, what many see, as institutionalising a “boy’s club” mentality within the Australian team. The past eighteen months have been disappointing for Ponting in terms of runs scored and he is the first to admit that. Typically, he has made no excuses.

Ponting has had 35 Test innings since January 2009 and only once has he stamped his authority in the opening match of a series.

The 150 he scored in the first innings at Cardiff remains, apart from the 209 against Pakistan in Hobart, his only score of importance. I am discounting Hobart because Aamir may have dropped Ponting deliberately before he had scored.

He has spent the last month honing his body for the grueling road ahead. A road that stretches to 2013, all the way from Cronulla to Cardiff.

Ponting will arrive in India the fittest he has been in his career. It is the only way he can keep up with an accelerating father-time.

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Will Ponting rediscover his form? Can he be the batsman that dominated in 2006 when he scored seven tons, including twice in both innings of a Test (in Sydney and Durban)?

Ponting, in many ways, has not been ‘selfish’ enough. He has many distractions and all of them worthwhile. He has his charitable foundation. He is mentor to an evolving team. He is a husband and young father. Most importantly he is the captain of the Australian cricket team.

Before flying out he hoped aloud that his team could play positive and attacking cricket. He is conscious of the damage to cricket’s psyche. The daily revelations of match-fixing annoy and disappoint him in equal measures. “I think if we all do the right things on the field, hopefully there will be something positive coming back on the newspaper pages about the game of cricket, which is what we will try and achieve.”

I have been saying for a very long time it is only the players that can restore cricket’s credibility. Most administrators are slow to react and overly conservative. More often than not they are in denial.

Cricketers in the great teams are in a defacto relationship. This relationship is one based on implicit trust. It works outside conventional rules and regulations. It is personal and constantly reaffirmed in principle and practice.

The not so great sides work more like a marriage. Their trust is explicit and codified by vows taken in reverential tones and often, sadly, broken with routine impunity.

The success of Ponting’s team will revolve around the measure of trust in the team. This is Ponting’s biggest challenge. He has shown enough trust in North and Johnson. It is time for these two to repay that trust.

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Starc, George and Pattinson are there to ensure Johnson is aware of this. Smith and Hughes will increase the pressure on North to deliver. Ponting will want to know who he can trust BEFORE the Ashes.

There will not be any more ‘freebies’ under Greg Chappell’s watch. Ponting will respect GC’s decisions and in a way will be relieved there is a man of stature pulling the selectorial strings.

It is time for Ricky Ponting to be more selfish and concentrate on scoring runs and catching at slips and running out batsmen from short-midwicket.

It is time for the M & M’s – Clarke, Hussey and Johnson – to repay the trust.

Otherwise, as I wrote in July, there is a massacre waiting to happen.

Likely Australian team for First Test against India: Watson, Katich, Ponting, Clarke, Hussey, North, Paine, Hauritz, Johnson, Hilfenhaus, Bollinger, 12th man P.George.

Likely Indian team: Sehwag, Gambhir, Dravid, Tendulkar, Laxman, Raina, Dhoni, Harbhajan, Zaheer Khan, Ishant Sharma, Abhi Mithun, 12th man Amit Mishra

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