Ponting Retirement

by vas02 Mon 03 Dec 2012, 08:07

He was one of the best batsmen in the game (with the greatest cracking pull shot I have ever seen), and among the finest fielders going (brilliant all-round, whether close in, at silly point, point, or in the slips). That apart, I will always think of Ricky as a competitor, a fighter who never gave up, and a guy with a side to his personality that was not often seen: an upright, conscientious man, one with a mature understanding of the big picture. It shows in the timing of his retirement, and I am glad that he will be able to finish off in style.

For a long time, we didn't know each other well, and I admit I was surprised when I saw this other side of him, but I am glad I did eventually. At the end of the 2008 Test series against Australia, when I was going through a rough patch, he took me aside and said, "Look, I've been following your batting through the series and I know you're struggling for runs, and people are after your blood, but I want to tell you, I still think you're playing well. Hang in there." Coming from someone who was seen as a tough guy, someone we Indians had had so many skirmishes with, this was a revelation. We didn't know each other well but he took the trouble to talk to me and offer those words of comfort.
In his long career, Ricky grew to become a fine leader and statesman. Tactically he may not have been as celebrated a captain as the brilliant Mark Taylor, for instance, but he was very aware of his position in the sport and where and what he was.

It was a marked progress from his early days. I remember seeing him after we won the Kolkata Test of 1998, to go 2-0 up on Taylor's side in the series. He had clearly shown that he was one of Australia's most outstanding talents, but that night in Kolkata he was not in the best state, and I wondered if he was going to waste his gifts.With all top-class players, what starts to go, I think, is not the runs, but the inevitability of being able to score those runs, the assurance of performance. When we went to Australia in 2003-04, there was an inevitability to Ponting scoring runs, and sure enough, he got two double-centuries in the series. It was understood that this guy was going to make us pay.

By the time we played him in 2012, that inevitability had gone, that sense of the expected. It's not that they can't score or that they won't, but the certainty in their batting goes. You know you can fight for some time, like Ricky did, because you don't want to let other people down, but I think he did realise in the end that he doesn't want to play sport like that. Cricket will be the poorer without him but retirements are like the runs made by the great players - inevitable.http://cricresults.com/