Punter's payday

The window of opportunity is an infinitesimally small tear in the fabric of time and space, but a look through it can open up unknown vistas. Ricky Thomas Ponting remembers one particularly glimpse, on an overcast Leeds day in 1997. With the Ashes deadlocked at 1-1, England had folded for just 172 on the second afternoon. When Ponting strode to the crease, the initiative had been squandered, with Australia shipping water at 50 for 4. A poor run against the West Indies the previous winter had seen him lose his Test place and though he made a pile of Shield runs for Tasmania to book his place on the flight to England, a starting berth was out of reach. Were it not for another man's misery, Ponting's Headingley experience would have been limited to the pavilion.

"I got a chance because Michael Bevan was having a really lean trot in the Test side," he tells you. It was his first knock of any consequence against the Old Enemy but the 127 he made, and a 268-run partnership with Matthew Elliott, secured the match and a precious series lead for Australia. It's no real surprise then, when he tells you with an almost reverent hush, "That's where it all started again for me, the big fork in the road. I don't think I've been dropped since, so it's something I look back on with fondness."

Four years later, he arrived back at the home of Yorkshire cricket, with 77 runs to his name from 10 previous Test innings. It all started to unravel on the tour of India, the last frontier that, try as they might, Australia could not breach. Ponting made runs in the first-class games, including a hundred in each innings at Delhi, but hit a brick wall in the Tests. He puts it down to a lack of belief more than anything else. "I knew I was batting okay but I just didn't back myself when the big games came around. I didn't believe in my technique enough."

What started as an aberration soon turned into a crisis. "In the first Test match [at Mumbai], Harbhajan got one to turn and bounce and I inside-edged it to bat-pad. I walked off thinking I hadn't done much wrong. But from then on, I was always trying to find different ways to play. I tried to sweep, I tried to use my feet... none of it worked [laughs]. I just didn't trust myself."

Though Harbhajan tormented him through the series, Ponting says taking a break was never an option. Neither was excessive analysis of the problems besieging him. "I'm not a huge believer in changing my batting too much," he tells you. "If I'm not playing well and not making runs, the worst thing I can do is to go to the nets and keep batting. You need to get away from it and not worry too much. I knew that if I spent enough time in the middle, things would change for me."

That turning point would not be in India though, and looking back, Ponting is profuse in his praise for a bowling performance that was "just awesome". "Harbhajan didn't just trouble me, he troubled all our batsmen. He had us under pressure all the time and rarely bowled a bad ball. When a bowler turns it like that and gets bounce too, without giving you any free hits, it's very hard to score."

By Headingley that year, the wheel had turned 360 degrees and Ponting found himself where Bevan had been four summers previously. Failure would have meant losing his place to Simon Katich, in a line-up where competition for places was becoming cutthroat. But the man they call Punter didn't blink when confronted by the odds. He made 144 and a run-a-ball 72, even as Australia slid to their only defeat of the series. It's a match that he looks back on with mixed emotions, though he's quite emphatic that "we got mugged by the weather". He says, "We had to declare when we did to have a chance of bowling them out. Then, [Mark] Butcher played that fantastic innings of 173... on the last day, they were just too good for us."

You can't talk to an Australian about Headingley, though, without dredging up that epic Super Six encounter against South Africa in the 1999 World Cup. That match was the appetiser for the tied semifinal that followed, which Ponting says was the best game he's ever played in. "They were similar sort of games," he tells you. "Some things immediately come to mind, like Herschelle Gibbs dropping that catch in the first game." But did Steve Waugh really utter those words ("You've just dropped the World Cup, mate")? Punter gives a mischievous grin and says, "He said something similar to that, yeah. I was batting with him at the time but I couldn't pick up exactly what was said from the other end... it was words to that effect."

Ponting says the images from the closing stages of the Edgbaston semifinal are just as indelible. "Lance Klusener had barely mishit a ball through the whole tournament and then he miscued two in a row. We had a couple of run-out chances and we took the second one," he says with a look that still betrays some surprise. He confesses that with four balls left, "in my mind, I was already packing my bags and catching the plane. It was almost impossible for them to lose from there but somehow they managed to."

When you first meet him, at the Karnataka State Cricket Association's indoor nets where he's coaching young teens as part of an initiative sponsored by Parle-G and arranged by Procam International, you're struck by how relaxed how is. He's wearing a red Polo tee, khaki golfing shorts and the impish smile you sometimes see when he hits the stumps direct from cover point. There's plenty of friendly banter and words of encouragement, especially once the whole group moves outside for fielding practice. The kids have to aim at a solitary stump from 20 yards and the rare direct hits are warmly applauded. Afterwards, when he walks over to talk to you, there's still time for autographs and pats on the back.

He can relate to these young boys, he tells you, because he moved away to the Australian Cricket Academy when just 16. The first steps, though, were taken in Launceston, in the heart of Tasmania, not a region renowned for producing Test cricketers. Young Ricky enjoyed games of park cricket, with kids his age from the neighbourhood. "We use to live on top of a hill," he tells you, "and down at the bottom, there was a big park area. We used to go down there and play almost every day." He cites David Boon and Kim Hughes as his earliest influences. "Hughes was a batsman that I loved to watch. He was very flamboyant... used to go out there and play his shots all the time. Boon, he lived only about 10 or 15 minutes away. He gave me a path to follow."

That path took him to the Academy at 16, a first-class debut at 17, and a place in an Australia tour party when just 19. It's been a glorious era for Australian batsmanship but Ponting insists that the level of competition never intimidated him. "It's something I never really thought about, to be honest. All I considered was going out and doing the best I could for Tasmania. I knew that if I did the job for my state, I'd get recognition from the Australian selectors. I didn't want to think too far ahead and put pressure on myself."

The imperviousness to pressure and dazzling strokeplay that made Rodney Marsh single him out as a star to watch were in ample evidence on Ponting's Test debut. Playing against Sri Lanka at the WACA in Perth, Ponting raced to 96 before getting "a dubious decision". "It was one of the best moments of my life, making my debut for Australia in a Test match. And to get a few runs on top of that just made the occasion even better," he says. "But missing out on a century when I was so close was probably one of the worst things that's ever happened to me. The emotions that day went from extreme happiness to extreme sorrow."

Success came at a price though. Soon, there were whispers of an alcohol problem and a burgeoning reputation as a bit of a lad. The nadir was reached on the tour of India in 1998, when he was involved in an unsavoury punch-up in Kolkata. Despite closing ranks in public, it was clear that the powers-that-be in Australia were not amused. Going to the pubs back home and betting on the greyhounds - the genesis of the Punter nickname, coined by Shane Warne - was one thing, a wild child in baggy green quite another. Something clearly had to give.

Understandably, it's not a phase that Ponting looks back on with any degree of pleasure. "I don't even think about that anymore," he tells you. "I'm a better person now and I don't get myself into that sort of situation. I feel good every day when I wake up and I just love the person I am now."

The makeover impressed the selectors too, and though there were a few raised eyebrows when he was given the one-day captaincy last February, it wasn't entirely unexpected. "It was a bit of a surprise," he says with disarming honesty. "I really thought I was third in line to get the job. I reckoned Gilly [Adam Gilchrist] would make the transition from vice-captain to captain and I was expecting to maybe be the deputy. As it turned out, the selectors recommended me to the board."

Ponting's first task at the helm was to tide over the loss of the Waugh twins, unceremoniously axed after reverses against South Africa and New Zealand in the southern summer. "They're great players and to lose them both in one go was a bit of a shock," he tells you. "It was a surprise for everybody. No one saw it coming."

Any doubts about his own credentials were quickly dispelled after a 5-1 thumping of South Africa, away from home. It was an important series for the restructured team, and especially for its captain. He says, "You can imagine what the headlines would have been had we lost 5-1. Everyone would have questioned the decision to make me captain and leave Steve Waugh out of the side. There was a fair bit of pressure on us going into that series but we played some great cricket."

Routing their nearest challengers in both forms of the game was doubly sweet, in the context of what some Australians saw as South African whining in the wake of the Test series. Graeme Smith's much-publicised comments on Aussie sledging did not go down well, though Ponting admits that, "it's probably an ugly part of our game". But like most, he thinks that no amount of legislation will ever stamp it out fully. "There will always be some sort of gamesmanship in cricket, as there is in any sport," he says, "but it's a question of knowing where the line is, and not over-stepping that."

Stump microphones and assorted gimmicks that put players under the public microscope don't help. "The television guys have a responsibility, to the players and the public," Ponting says. "The stump mikes are supposed to be turned off as soon as the ball is dead but that isn't always the case. That's when you hear a lot of the stuff going on."

He won't be cleaning his players' mouths out with carbolic, but he has ideas of his own on the captain's job. He admits that though there was no conscious effort, he learnt a lot from Steve Waugh and Mark Taylor. "Your approach to captaincy depends on the way you've been brought up, the way you were taught to play the game. What I've said all along is that my leadership will be based on instinct, doing what I think is right at the time." He is loath to compare his predecessors, though he admits, "Steve was probably a little bit more demanding. And because he was such a leader from the front, he expected everyone else to do the sort of things that he did."

You get a glimpse of the new steel when you quiz him about his remarks on Brett Lee being too expensive for the one-day game. Does he really feel that genuine quicks are a luxury? Not at all. "It's great to have those guys in your side," he says. "You need them to bowl the express overs and knock over a few, but at the same time, you want them to come on and bowl tight spells as well. I'd never ask Brett to drop his pace. It's just a question of being more consistent."

Consistency has been the mantra for Australian cricket over the past decade and though much has changed in the seven years since Ponting's debut, he insists the culture around the side is very much the same, "something that will hopefully continue through the ages". He adds, "We've become more professional obviously, in that cricket is now a career. We prepare a lot more thoroughly than we used to."

He doesn't need to think hard when you ask him about the reasons for Australia's dominance. Shield cricket, in all its guises - Pura Milky or not - is "tough, uncompromising and breeds exceptional cricketers. When you have only six first-class sides, you have to be a very good player to make the breakthrough." The overwhelming success that Australian discards have enjoyed in English county cricket - sharks in a paddling pool with plankton - says enough about the relative merits of each system.

On a personal level he is determined, though, not to let the added responsibility of captaincy, and of being one of the senior-most members of the side, shackle his fiercely attacking instincts at the crease. "It's important for me to enjoy my cricket as I always have," he says. "When I prepare myself as a batsman, I don't worry about what the other guys are doing. If you sit back and think about captaincy too much, you just put yourself under a lot of pressure, which isn't of much help on the field."

What does help though is being part of a batting line-up that has made runs for fun over the last 18 months. The knowledge that each man can go out and win a match off his own bat has done much to ease individual stress levels. "When you have very good players, in-form players, coming in all the way down the list," says Ponting, "you can go out there and not worry about anything. Just watch the ball and score your runs. We've been lucky in that the last couple of series, our openers - Justin Langer and Matthew Hayden - have just been awesome. They've really set the platform for the others. As for Gilly, he's a great player who can change the course of a Test match in half an hour with his batting. And his keeping's as good as anyone else's at the moment." After a moment's thought, he chuckles and says, "A useful guy to have in the side."

The Ashes, the defence of the World Cup and a tour of the West Indies lie over the horizon. "For some, nothing beats playing in the World Cup and winning it. It only happens once in four years and the guys are all excited about it," he tells you. "But we'll worry about the Ashes first." But is that really a worry, you ask, unable to resist. Surely, the Aussies fancy their chances. His eyes crinkle at the edges and he laughs. "Oh yeah, for sure. If we play to our best, we're hard to beat any game we play."

With that, a shake of the hand and a "G'day, mate", he takes your leave, pausing to sign a couple of autographs. As you look into those narrow, piercing eyes you become more and more convinced that this is the man who will be lifting the World Cup in a few months' time. When that happens, the transformation from Bad Boy Punter to Responsible Ricky will truly be complete.