One of cricket’s most combative characters has called time on his career. The world will remember Ricky Ponting, now playing his last Test, not for great sportsmanship but for his ability to soften up his approach every time the sport complained of his team’s excesses and, as an individual, mellow down and try to inspire the next generation.
No captain has won more Tests (47) nor player as Ponting (108 wins), besides having featured in three World Cup victories, in two as captain. Conversely, no Australian has lost three Ashes series as captain, which just goes to show how humbling the game can be, how it plays the equaliser to bring down even the mighty to the fold of the ordinary.
By playing on, Ponting willingly risked losing the sheen even if his record of 71 international centuries is second only to Sachin Tendulkar’s dazzling 100. He was clearly the batsman of the first decade of the new millennium in at least two forms of the game and he quit because he could not live up to the high standards he had set after having given it everything he had for 17 years.
A creature of the age in being so prepared to get into opponents’ faces while on the field, Ponting’s self-belief extended to the world and its umpires having to believe all his appeals were “out”. And yet his is a tale of early redemption from a youthful romp in which bingeing on booze was considered fashionable to go on to relish a career of sporting conquests in which his teams sustained a great Australian tradition of hard-as-nails cricket on the pitch and enduring friendships off it.