Let's Stay With Ricky Ponting the Batter, the Fielder

It’s been a bad year for Ponting. It’s been a bad year for Australia. Most would look at the losses against India and South Africa and agree that yes, it been a terrible year, for Ponting and Australia.

The point to ponder, however, is: is it only about the losses? Or is there more to it?

To my mind, the last year has been about the fragmentation of the very concept of Team Australia. I have been an ardent admirer of the team for several reasons. The Australians fought hard, and fought well, coming back so many times from impossible situations that one believed that no situation was a bad situation for them.

For them, it wasn’t over till it was. Also, for every Australian in the team, there were two waiting in the wings, and no team could thus take them lightly. They were constantly setting the standards and then going out and raising the bar.

Most importantly, even as they fought hard, they did so gracefully, respected the spirit of the game. If they were losing, which wasn’t very often, they didn’t lose their heads.

Under Ponting, Australia has made a fabulous mess of all that they stood for. They beat India in Sydney, but it was Kumble’s Indians that covered themselves with glory. They came to India and Ponting proclaimed, grandly, about how they were the team that was playing new age cricket and how India were still in the dark ages. In the end, it was the Aussies that learned a lesson or two, or did they?

Perhaps not, as the remark of one of the Aussie greats about Ponting’s field settings suggests. He said that Ponting erred in setting fields suiting Warne and McGrath for lesser bowlers like Johnson, Lee and Kreiza, and lost the plot, therefore, in India, and against South Africa.

Ponting got a great team, and stepped into the shoes of some great predecessors – Border, Taylor, and Waugh. They were men who led the team not only with tact and ability, but with a lot of grace as well. They supervised transitions as smoothly as they executed breathtaking strokes, respected the opponent, even as they never doubted their own strengths.

Skipper Ponting has not been able to do most of what his predecessors did. We all love the batter and the fielder Ponting, but Skipper Ponting needs to hand over his hat, to either Michael Clarke or to Hussey.

Personally, I would prefer Hussey, because he seems a more restrained sort of fellow, a man who seems to always make a fair assessment of what he can deliver and what he can’t, and then find ways and means to accomplish the job, successfully, and, more important, quietly.

Might seem a trifle un-Aussie, but that’s what Australia needs now. Ricky Ponting, the splendid batsman and fielder, and a captain who can rebuild a team that is in tatters by the high standards it has set for itself.