cricket with balls

Rick (y) Ponting is a weird man.

After inheriting one of the greatest test teams of all time, he seemed a lot more worried about ruining their record than actually winning when he first got the job.

Then he had several melt downs against the English. Coupled with the fact McGrath fell over and Martyn was clearly sleeping with several daughters of umpires, he lost that series.

More often than not Ponting captained via the committee system. He never seemed to make any decisions that weren’t in consultation with, Lehmann, Hussey, Gilchrist, or Warne.

No one was harsher on him than me. Except possibly my dad, whose favourite phrase is “he’s not a captains @sshole”.

However In recent times Ponting has actually looked like a captain, a real one.

My belief is that losing Warne and McGrath, is the best thing that can happen to him as a captrain.

Rick (y) is not a deep thinker. He has never had to be, he was a child prodigy who became a legend. Talented people don’t think as much as the non talented, why should they.

Suddenly losing over a 1000 wickets, he has to think. He can’t captain on autopilot anymore. For him it’s not natural to think about cricket.

He doesn’t need to train as hard as Justin Langer, he doesn’t need to think about batting like Nasser Hussain, and he doesn’t need to invent wickets like Stephen Fleming did.

He is the boy wonder who made captain of an amazing cricket side, which is quite different to the men who preceded him.

Steve Waugh was a historian, who believed that pace bowlers could win any match, and if not I’ll bring that blonde guy on. This is the man that liked bowling first, with the second greatest leg spinner of all time on his side. He was born talented, but not Ponting like.

Mark Taylor was a strategic captain, who didn’t like the game to get out of hand. He would use spinners early, part timers all the time and was constantly thinking of new fields that would disrupt the batsmen. As a batsman he was an average opening batsmen who kept himself in his side because of his captaining.

Allan Border was old school. He liked to abuse his players, he wanted tough cricketers, and if you weren’t up to it, you were told you weren’t up to it. He was the perfect Vice Captain. As a batsman he was talented, but he fought for everything that came to him.

Each of these captains got a better side than their predecessor. But Ponting is the man who was given the gold star treatment. He came into a team that was already World champions, he didn’t have to fight the West Indies like the others did.

He is defined like Border and Steve Waugh by winning. His whole life is about winning, about being the best, like Jordan and Hitler before him. Captaincy is the one thing he is not the best at, but you can see how bad he wants that as well.

Ponting is a clicky sort of guy, Dizzy Gillespie and Cameron White have found out as much. If you’re his friend he will drag you along until your ready like Symonds, or if your not one of his favourites you won’t be given any time to shine.

His best friend in the team was Damien Martyn that tells you a lot about him. When I flew with the Aussie team, I noticed that in general the team grouped together, but Martyn and Ponting were separate, speaking in hushed tones.

I only noticed all this cause I was perving on Mrs Ponting.

The two things I noticed about his captaincy in the first test were, that he actually enforced the follow on. Vvs Laxman wasn’t playing, but neither were the two greatest bowlers of the last ten years.

The second was the way he used Symonds with the ball. He used him in a proactive way. In the past Symonds was thrown the ball because it seemed like the right thing to do, however this time he was thrown the ball as an attacking tactic.

It worked, twice.

Enforcing the follow on worked as well. Finally Ponting is learning to trust his instincts. He’ll need to, this side is probably never going to be as good as it was before.

It needs the captain to step up.

The signs are good, the best captains are born with strategic knowledge and a feel for the game. For the rest of us, we need to learn as we go.