At the Close of Play. Ricky Ponting

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СКАЧАТЬ it down, Punter,’ he said to me, and then he started cleaning himself up.

      After a couple of minutes, Pistol and his sparring partner sat down to continue their meals. Everything was fine until the man decided to try to read a newspaper while he tucked into his curry, at which point, he knocked his cup of water straight into Pistol’s lap. Again, Pistol’s cries of dismay were heard around the plane, while I just lost it completely.

      Maybe you had to be there, or perhaps I’m just a bloke with no compassion …

      I tried to rein myself in, but I couldn’t. Pistol was spewing, but he couldn’t take his rage out on the old bloke. ‘What are you laughing at?’ he snarled at me, to which I rather naively replied, ‘What do you think I’m laughing at?’

      Pistol went to tap either the top of my head or the top of my seat, as a way of underlining the fact he wasn’t happy, but he missed his target and clipped me across the mouth. Now, I wasn’t laughing; instead I tried to stand and confront him, but I had my seat belt on so I couldn’t get up and suddenly I was looking like a goose. Embarrassed and angry, when I finally got to my feet I went to grab him by the scruff of the neck, which was an over-the-top reaction, but where I come from you never hit someone unless you want a reaction, and he’d hit me. A few of the boys had to come between us and settle us down, with more than one of them reminding us that the Australian reporters covering the tour were also on the plane. Pistol was happy to let it go but — ridiculously, thinking about it now — I was not, and a little while later, as we waited in the aisle to disembark, I said just loud enough for him to hear, ‘You wait till we get off this plane.’

      I’d scored 35 batting at three in the game against South Africa we’d played before the flight, and Pistol had opened the bowling, but we were both dropped for our next game. Tubby brought the two of us together and told us that while he understood that touring isn’t always easy, and inevitably blokes can get on each other’s nerves occasionally, we had to be smarter than to get into a fight in such a public place. When I stopped to think about how I’d reacted, I realised I’d totally underestimated how much the stress of travelling back and forwards was getting to me. Recalling the incident now, it’s amazing it never made the papers but those were different times. A great irony for me is that Pistol is a terrific bloke, someone I like and just about the last person I would have imagined myself fighting. Except for this one time, we always got on really well.

      I WAS HAPPY to get home, and this showed in my only Shield game before the start of our Test series against the West Indies, when I had a productive game against WA at the beautiful bouncing WACA. I was duly picked to bat at three for the first Test in Brisbane, and at the pre-game team meeting Tubby underlined the same points he’d made before the celebrated series in the Caribbean: how we mustn’t be intimidated by them; how we had to be aggressive; how the blokes who like to hook and pull had to keep playing those shots.

      My ‘baptism of fire’ came quickly enough, as I was in on the first morning when there were only four runs on the board, after their captain, Courtney Walsh, sent us in and new opener Matthew Elliott (in for Michael Slater) was out for a duck. At lunch I was 56 not out, with Tubby on 19, and I was flying. Ambrose, Walsh and Bishop had all tested me with plenty of ‘chin music’ but I went after them, and it was one of the most exhilarating innings of my life, right from the moment the first ball I faced kicked up at me and I jabbed it away to third man for four. All my early runs came through that area, and then I put a bumper from their fourth quick, Kenny Benjamin, into the crowd at deep fine leg. When Bishop tried a yorker I drove him through mid-off for four, and then I did the same thing to Ambrose, while Walsh fired in another bouncer and I hooked past the square-leg umpire for another four. On the TV, Ian Chappell described me as the ‘ideal No. 3’ but others may have been thinking differently.

      Benjamin came back and I moved into the 80s with a drive past mid-on for another four. I was thinking not so much about making a hundred as going on to a very big score, but then he pitched one short of a length but moving away, and I hit my pull shot well but straight to Walsh at mid-on. It was a tame way to get out, and I had one of those walks off the ground where I was pretty thrilled with my knock but upset that it had ended too soon, so I was hardly animated as I acknowledged the crowd before disappearing into the dressing room. I made only 9 in our second innings, caught down the legside, but we went on to win the game by 123 runs and I felt my counter-attack on the first day had played a significant part in the victory.

      My bowling had also played a part, after Steve Waugh strained a groin in the Windies’ first innings. I was called on to complete his over and with my fifth medium-paced delivery I had Jimmy Adams lbw. This meant my Test career bowling figures now looked this way: 29 balls, two maidens, two wickets for eight.

      A week later we were in Sydney for the second Test, but I suffered a double failure, out for 9 and 4, both times playing an ordinary shot. But we won again to take a firm grip on the series — the only way we could lose the Frank Worrell Trophy was for the West Indies to win the three remaining games. I had a month to prepare for the Boxing Day Test and in that time I played in three ODIs, for scores of 5, 44 and 19 run out, a Shield match against Victoria in Hobart, where I managed 23 and 66, and a tour game against Pakistan (the third team in the World Series Cup) where I scored 35 and we won by an innings. Sure, none of this was special, but it wasn’t catastrophic either so I didn’t expect the bloke on the other end of the line to be chairman of selectors Trevor Hohns when I answered the phone at home a few days before Christmas.

      When he told me I was out of both sides I was so stunned I didn’t say much. I certainly didn’t complain, but I didn’t ask any questions either. Matthew Elliott was hurt and Michael Bevan and I had been omitted, with Matthew Hayden, Steve Waugh (returning from injury) and Justin Langer coming into the side. Lang would bat at three, which might have given the best clue as to the team hierarchy’s thinking. I would come to learn that both Trevor and Mark Taylor were reasonably conservative in much of their cricket thinking, and I think their concept of the ideal No. 3 was a rock-solid type, what David Boon had given them for the previous few years. At this stage of his career, Lang was like that, whereas my natural instinct was to be more aggressive. Looking back, given the attacking way I played when I was 21, I probably needed to score a lot more runs than what I did at that time to keep the spot for long. But the truth is I didn’t know then why I was dropped, because they never told me, and I still don’t know now. I was never told anything specific about my original promotion up the order — it just seemed like a logical progression — or why I was abandoned so quickly. If they thought I had weaknesses in my technique or my character, why did they move me to the most important position in the batting order in the first place?

      Almost immediately after Trevor’s phone call, Mum and Dad took me out to the golf club, in part because they thought we’d escape the local media there. It was good to get out of the house but Launceston is not that big a city and the reporters were waiting behind the ninth green. Over the years, journos learned that if they wanted to find me the golf course was the best place to look. This time, I think I handled it okay and they were sympathetic with their questions, but it was almost bizarre as I watched them walk away. I felt like calling out to them, Don’t forget about me!

      One of the things that nagged at me was that I had been keen to bat at three when Tubby offered me the opportunity. But maybe I signed my ‘death warrant’ when I took on the challenge. Perhaps it would have been smarter to stay at six to give me more time to settle into Test cricket. Boonie had told me I should bat down the order for a couple of years, had even made me bat at four in that Shield game after the second Test, and maybe I should have listened to him. In fact, a lot of thoughts spun through my head, none of them pretty, all of them amplified because I hadn’t seen the sack coming. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t quite sure how to feel … sorry for myself … determined to get back … embarrassed … distraught … all of the above …

      All I ever wanted to do was play for Australia СКАЧАТЬ