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Australia left their next series against the West Indies without two things: an inability for batsmen to convert half-centuries to big scores, and Ricky Ponting’s prime. Or more specifically, I mean the symbolic end of Ponting’s prime.
For the first two parts of the series, click here.
Kemar Roach smashed Ponting’s left arm at the WACA and he forced him from the field. Ponting hit Roach out of the attack first, but Roach forced him from the field as soon as he had achieved that.
It was Ricky Ponting’s prime walking off the field. It was an image that would stick in my mind.
Every criticism I read of Ponting after that, it was an image that such a criticism could be attached to. No statistic could be as compelling as that sight of Ponting walking off the field.
I believed Ponting belonged on a Test ground for years after that day. But that event was the first event in which Ricky Ponting belonged off the field, because of injury.
But Australia’s problems could be overlooked in the 2009-10 season. The West Indies couldn’t take 20 wickets. Pakistan just couldn’t win in Sydney, which meant Australia’s first innings collapse could be quietly forgotten.
Pakistan just couldn’t field, which at Bellerive meant Ponting made a double century and Michael Clarke made a daddy hundred, and their critics had to shut up.
After Australia went to New Zealand and managed to beat Daniel Vettori, a series against Pakistan in England loomed. For the batsmen, that meant a date with arguably the best new-ball pair in the world, Mohammed Asif and Mohammad Amir.
Australia played more professionally than Pakistan at Lord’s. Everyone was supposed to measure up to some basic standard in every discipline of the game. That’s why Australia won.
They were always going to lose 20 wickets, but they were always going to take 20 wickets cheaper due to Pakistan incompetence in the field and with the bat.
Shahid Afridi retired after Lord’s. It meant Pakistan needed a new captain. I thought that surely his replacement would be better. S***** B*** was to prove me very, very wrong.
The new ball combination of Asif and Amir was only to play one more match: Headingley, which would see Australia’s first double figure score of this period.
Ricky Ponting chose to bat first at Headingley. The ball moved around like it was on remote control. At Headingley, Australia went from struggling to find a batsman who could score a hundred, to struggling to score a hundred in total.
The carnage ended with Australia’s tenth wicket. They fought and fought, as they had done at the SCG. By the fourth innings, the target was eerily similar to the SCG. This time, Australia didn’t have Hauritz.
They had Steven Smith, whose second innings half century had help give Australia something to bowl at, but it was only the quicks that could successfully defend that something. They came within three wickets of doing so, but this time Imran Farhat and Azhar Ali held their nerve long enough the rest of the team to fall over the line and record a three-wicket win.
Australia’s first innings failure couldn’t be so easily brushed off that time.
Next loomed India. Australia scored big first innings runs. But the runs were never so big that India was completely out of the contest, and Australia’s staying ability in the third innings of both the Mohali and Bangalore Tests was found wanting.
Ponting scored three half-centuries, but wasn’t able to find that daddy hundred he had normally been so good at finding in the past.
Michael Hussey, after being forced to compromise his preparation for the tour because of a Cricket Australia fiat, left his spot for the Ashes in jeopardy. Marcus North bought himself two Tests with his century in Bangalore.
Shane Watson scored a century at Mohali, and after an argument with Michael Clarke, scored a much quicker half-century in the second innings before getting out.
Clarke himself didn’t make any runs, quick or slow. Simon Katich made three starts but couldn’t carry on. Tim Paine batted well in India but was always going to be handing back the wicket-keeper’s role to Brad Haddin for the Ashes anyway.
Australia then combined their first and third innings problems for the 2010-11 Ashes.
While Alastair Cook and Jonathan Trott seemed to bat for weeks at a time, Hussey and Haddin were the only batsmen to consistently make in the first three Tests as everyone else struggled – even at Adelaide where Katich and North played their final Tests.
This helped bring the contest to Melbourne at 1-1. Ponting was even going to bowl first if he won the toss. But on Boxing Day Andrew Strauss again inserted Australia. No Australian batsman made any real runs, and no Australian bowler took a wicket.
When the batsmen came back for their second go, the Ashes were gone. Graeme Swann showed Australia what they had voluntarily decided to leave out in their team – tight, off-spin bowling – and the English quicks, led by Anderson, prised out Australians slower than but just as surely as in the first innings.
England again won by an innings. Australia’s tail fought as Peter Siddle had with Haddin at the MCG but couldn’t take wickets at better than over 60 runs a wicket.
Usman Khawaja showed some promise on debut, but it was Steve Smith standing at the other end as Michael Beer became the last wicket of the series.
Smith was No.7 for this match. Australia weren’t sure what they wanted from him. The cricket world could only see what he lacked. But he was a stayer.
He had to go for a while in order to learn how to become a Test stayer, but he showed at Sydney he was worth persevering with. Australia would one day appreciate that. But this wasn’t the day. This was England’s Australia Day.
Australia’s batting could be summed up with three simple words: “Australia can’t bat.”
It was time for a new leader. It was time for Clarke.
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