At the Close of Play. Ricky Ponting

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СКАЧАТЬ arms to a ball that cuts back a foot or two and takes my off-stump.

      This game rarely lets you get ahead of yourself. In the evening we have a few beers in the rooms with our gear all around us and the chat begins all over again.

      This is who I am and now this is finishing and I suppose that begs a question I am not too keen to ponder: I might not have been finished with the game, but it was finished with me and am I now the person it has shaped?

      Someone said when I walked out of the Australian dressing room the door slammed on a generation of cricket. That might be right, but for me there was something deeper. I had been raised in the game. The dressing room was a cradle, I was formed in these confines, I grew up in them and I have as good as lived in them for all my adult life up to this point. There was only ever the game and the team, the competition and the anticipation, and now it is time to move on.

      AFTER MOWBRAY it was back to Sheffield Shield.

      Twenty years ago I played my first game for Tassie as a 17-year-old and here I am again. At 38 I get to celebrate for the first time as my home state wins the coveted Sheffield Shield. It’s a great feeling and I’ve had a good year, even knocking up a 200 in the game against NSW that followed my Mowbray visit.

      Cricket is a cruel mistress and there she was at me again. I had started the summer in great form in first-class cricket and was the highest run-scorer going into the series against South Africa that would be my last. I felt like my technique, my reflexes, my game were in the best place they had ever been, but when it came time to wear the baggy green I could not make a run. So, going out and hitting a double hundred in the Shield a few months after I had literally landed on my face in Test cricket was a bitter irony, but a sure indication that there’s an enormous mental element to this game. No matter how hard I tried — and believe me there is nobody who tries and trains harder than me — I couldn’t put all the pieces back together at Test level.

      It still hurts to admit I had lost it, but it felt good to end the season giving back to my home state, a place that had given so much but for most of my career had been so far away, so hard to get back to.

      While Tasmania was winning the Shield competition Australian cricket seemed to be spiralling out of control during a series against India.

      They’d barely missed a beat after I left. In my last game in Perth we had a chance to regain the number one rank in world cricket, but now that seemed so far away. In the first series they played after my retirement they easily accounted for a Sri Lankan side. My only contribution was a lap of honour at Bellerive before the Test.

      After that things just seemed to go wrong and it was hard to watch. I know more than most how India can get on top of you. The cricket is like the country — it can be breathtaking, but at times it can close in on you and you feel like you are being smothered. It’s easy to lose your way there and the Aussies did. I had never led a team to a series victory in India, but not only did they lose 4–0 on the field, they lost their way off it. The dressing room that I loved had changed in the past few years and as hard as it was to see how bad they were going out in the middle, it was just as hard knowing how much they were struggling off it.

      I’d seen the signs. When we lost in Perth I went with the boys to have a drink with the South Africans and I was taken aback by the feeling they had in the sheds. Sure, it’s easy to be happy when you’ve won so well, but they were a tight group, a small travelling band that had gelled together and taken down the enemy and as I looked at them enjoying the afterglow I was gripped with a sense of loss.

      We used to be like that, I thought.

      Everything has to change in cricket, but I’m not so convinced that all the changes I’ve seen in the past few years are for the better. I was in that Australian dressing room for 20 years and it seemed every time a legend left his corner another arrived to take that place. I saw Adam Gilchrist replace Ian Healy, and Stuart MacGill pick up a lazy 200 wickets when forced to play understudy to Shane Warne. I remember when a 30-year-old called Michael Hussey first got his shot at the big time and a young bloke called Michael Clarke came into the side.

      Michael Clarke’s got the captaincy now and it’s fair to say that the trend that started in the last years of my time in the job has continued. First-class cricket just isn’t bringing up the players, particularly batsmen, it once did. There was a time when guys with 10,000 first-class runs, guys who had scored century after century all around Australia and in England for counties, could not get a look-in. Sure there were a few, myself included, who came in young and relatively inexperienced, but we knew we were always under pressure for our places from others who had equal rights to them.

      Anyway, I have to let that go now …

      

      The baggy green cap is the most powerful symbol in Australian sport. Nothing comes close to it for its tradition, meaning and representation. Only a small number of cricketers have played Test cricket for Australia and been presented with the baggy green. 365 cricketers achieved that honour before I made my Test debut in 1995. My Test cap number 366 is now almost part of my DNA.

      Fewer than 450 cricketers have earned a baggy green since Test cricket began in 1877. That’s quite phenomenal when you think how many Australians have dedicated their life to cricket but have never reached the level of playing Test cricket for Australia. This is what I’ve always talked about when presenting brand-new baggy green caps to players making their debut for Australia. You are joining a pretty elite group and have achieved a pinnacle of personal achievement in Australian cricket. You are now part of the baggy green family — an exclusive club. How lucky are we!

      During my career, I had two baggy greens. My original cap was stolen out of my luggage on the way home from Sri Lanka in 1999. I’d only played 24 Tests at the time and I was gutted to think that the cap was gone. I was given a replacement baggy green that would stay with me right through to my last Test in Perth in 2012. It was a constant companion on and off the field. After losing my first cap, I carried my baggy green in my hand luggage wherever I went. It was with me in 144 Test matches all over the world and was looking pretty worse for wear when I retired from international cricket. There had been calls for me to change to a brand-new baggy green. Some said I was not treating the cap with the respect it demands, by wearing a faded, torn and out of shape baggy green on which you could hardly identify the Australian coat of arms on the front. But I am traditionalist and my baggy green tells a story — the story of my career. It reflects where I was, where I went and, in the latter years, how it was on its last legs — just like me. To me, my baggy green was a symbol of national pride, a monument to all my predecessors, team-mates and future Australian Test players, and a trophy for all the successes we achieved together. That baggy green was me.

      Now it forms part of a very special presentation box that Rianna and the girls gave to me for my first Christmas as a retired international cricketer. It sits beside a brand-new baggy green with the most beautiful images of our family standing on the WACA after my last game. The new baggy green now symbolises the next stage of my life. A time of looking forward while never forgetting the incredible opportunities that 168 Test matches, with my baggy green, gave me.

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