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Ponting's 40th ton the sweetest of all

Roar Guru
4th January, 2012
18

He’s too old, he’s past his use-by date, he should have quit last year, he should have been sacked. And now he’s a national hero again. Ricky Ponting’s 40th Test century was a long time coming – two years.

But when it came, it was like Paul Keating’s 1993 election victory, perhaps the sweetest of all.

It always is when the cynics doubt you and the knockers death-wish you.

It was enjoyed, what’s more, by a crowd that included the PMs before and after Keating, Bob Hawke and John Howard.

Ponting’s successor as captain, Michael Clarke, went one better, scoring a maiden Test double century that was more imperious and assured but perhaps not as compelling.

Such was the focus on Ponting’s plight it is likely to be the only 200 Clarke ever makes in parenthesis.

Ponting silenced his critics with a determined ton that broke his yawning drought, propelled Australia well down the path of a Test and series win against India and underlined his status as his country’s greatest Test run-scorer.

It very nearly didn’t happen.

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On 99, Ponting clipped a delivery to mid-on, took off for the make-or-break single and dived headlong for the crease.

A direct hit by Zaheer Khan would have caught him short by a metre. It missed by centimetres.

Ponting, a weight off his shoulders, thrust both arms in the air and began celebrations that must have seemed like a distant memory.

He waved his bat to his team-mates and to his wife Rianna and daughters Emmy and three-month-old Matisse.

At 37 years old, he may be the daddy of the Australian team, but with a good deal of the SCG turf dirtying his shirt front, he wore the impish grin of a cheeky schoolboy.

The cheers of an appreciative crowd turned to good-natured wolf whistles when a bare-chested Ponting changed his grubby shirt.

“To tell the truth, I’m a bit relieved,” he said later.

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“The selectors have stuck by me, and now I’m repaying them.”

Ponting’s wife suggested his decision to relinquish the Test captaincy last year may have contributed to his rejuvenated form this summer.

“It’s completely changed our life,” she told the Nine Network.

“He’s more relaxed. He’s a better dad – a better husband.

“We always felt a big score was around the corner. There’s no plans to retire – hopefully there’s another big score just around the corner after this.”

Players like Ponting don’t rewrite record books without having a taste for grinding opponents into the dust, and that’s what he and Clarke did.

After coming together when Australia were a perilous 3-37, they turned the game on its head with a mammoth fourth-wicket partnership of 288.

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With Australia already leading the four-Test series 1-0, Ponting and Clarke not only steered the hosts out of danger but set them on their way to a commanding, and probably match-winning, lead.

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