At the Close of Play. Ricky Ponting

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      In the end, after only a couple of days, I said to myself, ‘I’m going to get myself back in the team that quick it’s not funny. I’m going to go back to state cricket and get a hundred every time I bat. I’ll train so hard they’ll have to pick me again.’

      IF YOU LOOK AT MY SCORES in the Shield for the rest of the 1996–97 season, you’d think it took me a while to rediscover my form. But I actually felt good from my very first innings in January, when we played Victoria at the MCG. I went out with the intention of batting all day and reasonably quickly I felt the ball hitting the middle of my bat. But when I was on 26 Tony Dodemaide, the veteran fast-medium bowler, suddenly got one to seam back sharply and I managed to get a faint nick through to the keeper. As I walked off after getting a ball like that I felt like I was the unluckiest cricketer on the planet, but in our second innings I made 94 not out, my knock ending only when Boonie declared in pursuit of an outright victory. Then came a frustrating fortnight, where I was hitting the ball beautifully in the nets but could only make 8 and 6 against WA at Bellerive and then 39 against SA in Adelaide. I thought the world was against me.

      Trevor Hohns had told me to score heavily and if I wasn’t doing that, I knew I was no chance of making the upcoming Ashes tour. After that Shield game in Adelaide, I thought, This is not working. By ‘this’, I meant working my butt off. We finished early on day four and as soon as I could I booked a short holiday to the Gold Coast. For the next three or four days I didn’t think about cricket and I left it as late as possible to get back to Hobart for our next match. When I did get home, I only had time for a couple of training sessions and then I immediately scored a hundred in each innings against South Australia at Bellerive.

      I actually learned a lot about myself and what was best for me during this time. Hitting a million balls a day and training as hard as possible was not always the solution, especially if I felt I had to do it. Sure, I’d spent a lot of time in the nets before this but I’d never forced myself to go, to do even more, as if that was the only answer. When things weren’t working, I was better off trying to freshen up mentally, and the best way to do that was forget about the pressures of the game. I learned there is a difference between letting it happen and forcing it, in trusting my skills rather than searching for something more.

      The other thing that was crucial for me at this time was the support I received from Tasmanian coach Greg Shipperd. When I was working hard at practice, hitting ball after ball, he was always in my corner. He also offered what proved to be a critical piece of advice. My confidence had taken a hit, and Shippy was convinced I’d got into the habit of trying to hit my way out of trouble when things grew difficult. Of course, every batsman has rough spots during an innings of any length, especially if you bat near the top of the order and the pitch is offering some assistance to the bowler, but my brain was getting cluttered when this happened to me.

      In the first innings against SA, I scored 126 out of 248. Then Jamie Siddons, the SA captain, made a very positive declaration on the final day, which gave me the opportunity to produce an even better effort than my first dig. We had to win to keep our Shield chances alive and I was in at 2–52 as we chased 349 to win. Four hours later, we’d achieved a terrific victory and I had played an important part, finishing 145 not out. Selectors love match-winning hundreds, but even more important than that I’d been intimately involved in a special team victory, which reminded me of just what a great game cricket can be. In all the stress of losing and then trying to revive my international career, I’d forgotten a little of that.

      I made another big hundred in our next Shield game, against Queensland and finished the season with scores of 64 and 22 against NSW at the SCG. It was time to wait for the Ashes touring party to be named. I went through all the options available and realised that even with my big finish to the season, I was hardly a sure pick. The Test team had won the home series against the West Indies 3–2 before heading to South Africa, where it was in the process of claiming a hard-fought three-game series 2–1. However, question marks were hovering over the batting order, with Mark Taylor completely out of form and none of the excellent batsmen from my generation on the tour — Matthew Elliott, Michael Bevan, Greg Blewett, Matthew Hayden and Justin Langer — having cemented their spots. But none of them had cruelled their chances completely either. The media in Sydney was campaigning for Michael Slater to be recalled, while it was certain that Adam Gilchrist, who had enjoyed a fantastic season with bat and wicketkeeping gloves for WA before flying to South Africa to bolster the ODI line-up, would be Ian Healy’s back-up. What if the selectors looked upon Gilly as a batsman too, and decided to take an extra bowler? What if they decided to look for experience, and opt for either of the Shield’s leading run-scorers for the season — Tasmania’s Jamie Cox or Darren Lehmann of South Australia — or Stuart Law, who was still playing one-day internationals but who hadn’t appeared in a Test match again since we debuted in the same game.

      In the end, I think I was very lucky. Looking at the make-up of the squad now, it was top heavy with batting talent. Bevo was picked as the second spinner and Gilly as the second keeper, but the selectors still chose eight more specialist batsmen: Taylor, the two Waughs, Elliott, Blewett, Slater, Langer … and Ponting. I’ve always wondered, but I’ve never been game to ask, if that request Trevor Hohns had made of me — to go back to the Shield and score a ‘hell of a lot of runs’ — was what got me over the line. I’d done what he’d asked me to do, so maybe he and his fellow selectors felt obliged to honour their side of the bargain by giving me another go. It would have been far from illogical to pick one less batsman and one more bowler; as things turned out, a couple of the batsmen hardly had a dig on tour, while we had to call up some extra bowlers after the first choices suffered major injuries.

      What I know beyond question is that my career might have turned out very differently if I hadn’t been chosen for this Ashes tour. Matty Hayden missed the trip and didn’t get another opportunity for two-and-a-half years. Great players like Damien Martyn and Darren Lehmann had been picked for Australia as prodigiously talented young players in the early 1990s, but after being discarded it would be ages before they would be granted another go at the top level. In contrast, I was very fortunate. My second chance came quickly. I was determined not to waste it.

      I’m a watcher, a listener, a learner. I like to sit back in the corner and take everything in; learn as much as possible from as many people as I can. I’ve never really had any defined role models in my life but there have been plenty of people who I’ve watched very closely to help me be a better person. Bottom line for me has been that it’s up to me to be the best possible person that I can be. I had an understanding of where I wanted to be as a cricketer and as a person. I’ve always just been me. Anytime I messed up along the way, I’ve given myself a kick up the backside and then got on with things, making sure that each day I got up, looked in the mirror and asked myself how I could be a better person today. In many ways, I’ve been my own harshest critic but it’s helped me respond at times when I’ve most needed to. It’s helped me be true to myself and those around me and probably also helped me be a better role model for those looking to me as an example for how they might live their lives. That’s a big responsibility in many ways but one I have always been comfortable with.

      

      IT WAS A WEIRD experience, reacquainting myself with the other members of the Ashes squad for our flight to London via Hong Kong. I felt like I’d been out of the team for ages, rather than just five months, and quickly I discovered that things had changed a little in the time I’d been away.

      Mark Taylor had been struggling for runs, but had stayed in the Test team and ODI squad despite his lack of form, a policy that impacted СКАЧАТЬ