At the Close of Play. Ricky Ponting

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СКАЧАТЬ the first ball I faced in Test cricket … a well-flighted delivery from ‘Murali’ that did me fractionally for length as I moved down the wicket. I pushed firmly at the ball but it held its line and clipped the outside edge of my bat … and for a fateful second I thought my Test career might be over as soon as it had begun. Fortunately, I’d got just enough bat on it for it to shoot past first slip’s hand and down to the fence for four, which took away the possibility of a duck on debut and slowed my heartbeat a little. In fact, it calmed me down a lot — it doesn’t matter whether you’re batting in a Test match or in the park, if you nick your first delivery and it goes to the boundary you feel lucky, like it might be your day.

      For the next four hours, it looked like it was going to be mine.

      Initially, I was a little scratchy, but then they dropped one short at me and I belted it through mid-wicket for four. Middling that pull shot was what I needed; it was as if I shifted into a higher gear. From that point on, my feet moved naturally into position, I had time to play my strokes and my shot selection was usually on the money. I’d batted at the WACA a couple of times before and loved the extra bounce in the wicket and the way the ball came on to the bat, and the light, too, which seems to make the ball easy to pick up. All I focused on was ‘watching the ball’, a mantra I repeated to myself before every delivery, the way Ian Young had told me to do. Being out there with Mark, who always made batting look easy and was a brilliant judge of a run, helped me enormously and then, when he was out for 111 to make our score 4–496 Stuart Law came out. Two of us out there in our first Test. He started very nervously, which in a slightly weird way was good for me as well, because suddenly I felt like the senior partner instead of the rookie.

      When I reached my half-century, I looked straight away for my family in the crowd, especially for Mum, and I pointed my Kookaburra in her direction. It was a very satisfying feeling getting to fifty, because I knew — even with Steve Waugh coming back into the team and Stuey now looking comfortable — that I’d get another game. Now, I just wanted to enjoy it. We were already more than 200 in front, so I knew a declaration was coming sooner or later, certainly before stumps, but Tubby never sent a message saying I had a set amount of time to try to get a hundred. So we just kept going.

      It was only when I moved into the 80s that I really thought the ton was on. By that point, the way Stuey and I were going through the last session of the day, he’d get to a half-century and I’d make three figures about half an hour before stumps, and that seemed a logical time for a closure. But it wasn’t to be. Sri Lanka had just taken the third new ball and I was on 96 when left-arm paceman Chaminda Vaas got one to cut back and hit me above my back pad — closer to my knee than groin. They did appeal, quite loudly considering how much it had bounced and the state of play, while I panicked for that split-second after I was hit (as a batsman always does as a reflex when hit on the leg anywhere near the stumps), but I quickly calmed down when I realised the ball was clearing the stumps. Nothing to worry about.

      Then, Khizar Hayat, the umpire from Pakistan, gave me out lbw.

      I simply couldn’t believe it. I looked down at the ground, fought the urge to complain or kick the ground, and began to trudge slowly off. What else can I do? The Sri Lankan captain, Arjuna Ranatunga, rubbed me on the head, as if I was a kid who’d just been told to go inside and do some homework, and for a moment I felt a surge of anger, but I managed to let his gesture go. I felt so empty, a feeling accentuated by the mass sigh and stony silence that immediately greeted the decision, though the crowd was very generous in their applause as I approached the dressing room. You only get one shot at scoring a century in your first Test innings and I’d done the hard work … and that opportunity had been snatched away from me when everyone, me included, thought I was home. Apparently sections of the crowd got stuck into the umpire, but I didn’t hear it. All I could think of was the hundred that got away.

      Tubby declared immediately, with Stuey left at 54 not out, which meant that there was plenty of activity in the room as we prepared to go out for the final four overs of the day. There was still time for the boys to congratulate me on how I’d played and to tell me I’d been ‘ripped off’, a fact that was confirmed for me as I watched the replay of my dismissal on the television in our room. I was gutted. I felt like I’d got a duck, like everything I’d done was a waste. Back on the field, the fans were now really giving it to umpire Hayat, and this time I heard every crack, from the obvious to the cruel.

      Umpiring mistakes, as much as your own, can cost you records and matches, and this one cost me the chance to join that very exclusive club of Australians who have made a century in their debut Test innings. I guess there were extenuating circumstances; it was a really tough Test match. Hayat had been out on the field for five-and-a-half hours on a very hot day, and he was under pressure after reporting the Sri Lankans for ball tampering and then giving David Boon out when he shouldn’t have earlier in the Test. Making it worse, we went out and bowled four overs, and in the last over of the day I was fielding bat-pad on the offside for Shane Warne, and Warnie got a ball to fizz off the pitch, straight into the middle of the batsman’s glove and it popped straight up to me. All I had to do was catch it and throw it jubilantly up in the air, which I triumphantly did, but umpire Hayat said, ‘Not out.’

      Afterwards, I said all the things they expected me to say: that I would have taken 96 if you’d have offered it to me at the start of the Test; that good and bad decisions even out in the end; if the umpire said I was out, I was out … but I was still disappointed and I don’t think I truly got over it until I went out for dinner that night with my parents and Nan.

      ‘Another four runs would’ve been nice,’ Dad said. ‘But I’m proud of you, we all are.’

      Of course, with the Decision Review System (DRS) in place, you’d like to think decisions like that wouldn’t happen today. They’d have gone to the replay and then promptly reversed the decision. But at the time, I was not even aware that Hayat felt he’d made a terrible mistake. When he saw the replay at tea, his umpiring partner on the day, Peter Parker, recalled him being shattered he’d made a mistake. When they first introduced the DRS, I was hesitant, because I always worry about tampering with our game in any way on the basis that it’s pretty good the way it is. But then someone would ask, ‘Don’t you remember your first Test?’ And I’d think, Maybe a review system isn’t such a bad idea.

      The last word goes to Nan, who couldn’t hide the fact she was so thrilled with all I’d done and was doing with my cricket. I was so happy she was there to share my first Test with me. As I batted on that third day, and the possibility of me making a debut ton grew closer, the TV cameras found her in the crowd and a reporter went over to see how she was going. Of course, she was asked about that T-shirt — the one she made when I was nine or 10 that said I was going to be a Test cricketer — and she quipped that she was going to print up another one.

      ‘What’s this one going to say?’ the reporter asked.

      ‘I told you so!’ Nan replied, and everyone laughed.

      I’d missed out on the debut ton, but Nan was right: I was a Test cricketer.

      AT THE START of the 1995–96 season, I had been awarded a contract by the Australian Cricket Board. To tell the truth, I can’t remember what it was worth — if I had to guess I’d say around $50,000, with the potential to make quite a bit more — which reflects the reality that at this stage of my life I just didn’t care what they were paying me. Occasionally, I’d hear a senior member of the Australian team muttering about how badly we were being paid, how the ACB was ripping us off, and I’d just nod my head and move on. I just wanted to play. The ‘security’ a contract brought meant nothing to me, because it didn’t guarantee I was going to be involved in the next game. What mattered to me was how well I played, not how my bank account looked.

      For me, the best part about getting the Board contract was that it meant the СКАЧАТЬ