The great Australian hero makes a point

Unlike his predecessor Allan Border, Ricky Ponting has never managed to become a great favourite of Indian crowds. Part of the reason is that he is seen as the personification of all that is the worst of Australian cricket — a no-nonsense, hard-playing, no-quarter-giving, letter-of-the-law-following player who, in the years when Australia was the best team in the world, rubbed it in rather unsubtly.

This is unfair, and often media-inspired. And it takes away from what he is really the personification of — the great batsman capable of shaking off unproductive phases, and exhibiting the hard, unsentimental, champion-like quality of Australian cricket.
The Motera crowd even got into the ‘Hai Hai’ chant, once reserved by Indian crowds for Ravi Shastri in his playing days.

But that was the least of Ponting’s worries. As an Ashes-losing Australian captain sorely out of form, and potentially a World Cup-losing one too, the cries for his head had grown more strident. Before the match, one thing was clear: this would possibly be the last one-dayer for one of the two greatest batsmen in the game. If Australia lost, it was difficult to see Ponting keeping his job. If India lost, it was unlikely Tendulkar would play again.

But this was suddenly a changed Ponting. Gone was the uncertainty of the earlier matches; the hesitant footwork, the unsure strokeplay. The feet moved, the bat became an extension of the hand, and with every stroke the confidence grew. When he danced down the track to hit Yuvraj Singh inside out over extra cover, the years fell away, and the 36-year-old looked like he was at the peak of his powers. With that one shot he reduced all speculation about his ability to a huge joke.

The spinners on a helpful track were given an object lesson in how great batsmen refuse to be tied down. It was an innings of self-denial rather than self-indulgence, and that was easy to understand. Without Ponting, Australia might have struggled to make 150; the ease with which he played merely served to show up the ordinariness in the rest of the batting.

Apparently, he prepared for this match by watching his innings in the 2003 final when his 140 wrenched the game from India from the start. But that was a different kind of knock, full of sixes and arrogant shots. On Thursday, he showed another facet of his greatness. The measured, calculating professional route to a century.

Ponting doesn’t want to be loved. He’d rather be admired. And if he has to dip into his Australianness for that, so much the better.