Anthony Sharwood

“Things got heated with the Indian press because we had won the game – pure and simple.”

Ricky Ponting is not what you’d call a naturally warm person. He’s not rude or abrupt. Neither is he dispassionate or just plain disinterested, like some sporting prima donnas we’ve come across at Alpha over the years. And he’s definitely not arrogant. But he’s not exactly warm, either.
To be fair, Ponting met us under slightly intimidating circumstances. Visiting Alpha for a routine photoshoot and interview, as part of his commitments for his sponsor Adidas, you can imagine his astonishment when we whisked him under our offices to a car park, where we’d set up a Reservoir Dogs-style interrogation scene.
Alpha editor Rob Pegley’s concept for the shoot was not – repeat NOT – to convey Ponting as a man with closely guarded secrets he was reluctant to divulge. It was, quite simply, an image designed to convey the idea that the interview was on our terms, and that Ponting’s answers were unfiltered by PR fluff. In short, we wanted you, the reader, to understand that the interview wasn’t one of those sanitised, so-called “exclusives” that we all read too many of these days.
As it turns out, we didn’t need the props to entice Ponting to talk straight. When we retired post-shoot for an interview in the light of day, we found him to be open, honest and full of insightful comments on everything from India and the captaincy, to aspects of his personal life.
It was particularly interesting to hear him talk about having “grown up”. As all cricket fans know, Ricky Ponting, the boy prodigy who nearly went off the rails, has completed his metamorphosis into a captain who decides where the rails are laid. He knows it, too, and is more than willing to talk about how hard he’s had to work to get to this point.
Today, Ponting is as good as public property. And the really smart thing about the bloke is that he’s accepted the fact. So in his rare moments away from cricket, rather than duck for cover, he embraces the exposure. In many ways, his mindset is like his approach to the pull shot – the stroke he plays better than just about every willow-wielder in the world. In the split second it takes to decide to play the pull shot, the ball is coming straight at your face. Lose your nerve, and you get struck. Hold your form – all balance and assuredness – and you’ll swat the ball to the boundary or beyond.
An example: Ponting’s full-frontal approach to his role as public property is the newly established Ponting Foundation. In fact, on the day we hovered over him menacingly in our gangster clobber, his photograph was splashed in newspapers across the country, showing him at a charity gig with wife, Rianna. He was, of course, wearing a suit. Think about it: these days, when he’s not in cricket gear, how often do you see him dressed in anything other than a suit? As he admitted during our interview, he loves being busy. Might as well keep busy doing positive things than sitting around playing Xbox.
But it’s not just at the batting crease and black-tie dos that Ponting impresses. When you read his annual diaries, you understand just how much thought and work he puts in to those around him. Steve Waugh was endlessly credited with inspiring self-belief in the likes of Matthew Hayden and Justin Langer. But just as readily, Ponting, with his ear for a teammate’s self-doubt and his eye for technical deficiencies, can be credited with the re-emergence of Brett Lee from a perennial 12th man to the world’s best paceman. Ditto the rise and rise of Andrew Symonds.
Ponting might still earn reprimands and get docked match payments more regularly than any other Aussie player, but guess what? He’s the one charged with the job of questioning the umps and match officials when they make yet another bone-headed decision – whether it be giving him out LBW off a blatant inside edge or letting a serial niggler like Harbhajan off the hook.
He might also occasionally be caught on camera celebrating a bit hard – whether in full public view, as after the controversial Second Test against India in January, or by a rogue snapper late at night after a Caribbean triumph – but he is a sportsman, after all. And sport without emotion is like a library without books. In short, Ponting has never lost his boyish passion for the game. Critics often slammed Shane Warne for appealing too loudly and too often. But like Ponting’s exuberance, it was as much genuine emotion in the heat of the battle as gamesmanship.
If there’s one aspect to Ponting’s on-field persona that is open to question, it’s his tendency to raise his bat to family and teammates before the crowd. Even then, there are excuses. As mentioned, so much of his life is now public; so much of his combative personality is reined in; so many of his personal achievements are done in the name of the greater good of Australian cricket. If, occasionally, in his raw moments of personal triumph, his first instinct is to share his emotions with those closest to him, it’s hardly a crime. You might have guessed by now that we’re unabashed Ponting fans. For what it’s worth, we told him as much to his face. And the reason we did that is, in many ways, we’re inspired by him. Sure, he lives an unreal life, earning the best part of $2 million a year by swinging a bat, but he is a man who has excelled way, way beyond expectations. The working-class kid from an untrendy part of our smallest state, with a past tainted by a tendency to sink a few too many beers, has grown up.
And we should also point out that Ponting has become unquestionably the best Aussie bat since Bradman. During our interview, he did a fair imitation of a bloke who didn’t know his Test or one-day averages. When we quizzed him, he was a run or two out on both counts.
And let’s not overlook Ponting’s captaincy skills. After all, the bar of the Australian captaincy has been set ridiculously high in recent years. Border, Taylor and Waugh are a holy trinity that symbolises the resurgence of Aussie cricket. After that lot, the only possible trajectory looked to be a downward one. And that’s exactly what seemed to be the case after the Ashes loss in England, in ’05. But, since then, Ponting has amassed an overall Test winning percentage that is superior to each of those three guys. Already, you can see Michael Clarke grooming himself for the monumental task of maintaining, or even increasing, Australia’s remarkable run of success. Not by coincidence, Clarke is modelling himself on Ponting, to the point his teammates said it felt “no different” when “Pup” stepped in as skipper for the last two one-dayers on this year’s Windies tour. As Ponting says, “Clarke reminds me of me.”
It’s a well-worn cliché of Australian sport that the job of the Australian cricket captain is as important – if not more important – than the job of prime minister. That, of course, is just folklore, but it’s hard to imagine even the workaholic Kevin Rudd toiling as diligently on his daily inbox – including his own image – as “Punter”. So the man isn’t naturally warm. Neither, by most accounts, is Steve Waugh, or the current Pope, and it’s hardly hurt their popularity.
The belief is that Ponting will continue until the World Cup in 2011. Long may he reign.

INDIA
You had a poor tour with the bat in 2001, then missed the first three Tests late in ’04 as Australia took a series-winning 2-0 lead. The upcoming tour to India must be a huge gap in your CV that you want to fill?
Oh, absolutely. It was probably the most disappointing time of my career. We’d been talking and thinking about the tour and developing game plans and game styles then, on the eve of the tour, I busted my thumb. A lot of the things that we’d implemented were put in place by Gilly over there, and we ended up winning the series. I was really close to playing [the third Test]. I’d made myself one of these plastic guards to try and convince the physio to let me play, but my thumb hadn’t quite healed well enough. But just to be there when the guys sealed the series was pretty special. I ended up coming into the next Test match, which we lost.
So this time you want to be part of a winning team all the way through?
Yeah, there’s a bit of a void in my international career in India. I don’t think I’ve ever made a Test 100 there, so there are some things I’d like to achieve. I’m sure it’s going to be a great series after what was a pretty competitive series here last time.
Because of the combative nature of the last series, are you going to approach this one any differently? For example, will you get the teams together before the first Test?
We did that after the Sydney Test, anyway. If you look at the Perth Test (the one after Sydney), that Test match was played in a great spirit. The one-day series was played in really good spirits as well. There weren’t as many serious issues arising out of the whole Test series as there was made out to be. There was a lot of negativity from the press, but all the feedback I got from people I spoke to in the public was very positive. As a captain, and as a team, we identified some areas that we can improve, little things that we can do better and more consistently.
Like what?
Umpiring decisions and probably not walking quickly enough. A few of us copped poor decisions but stood around a second or two too long in the middle, which can have a pretty negative impact on an individual, the team and people’s perceptions of the team. So we’re aware of those things and we try day in, day out to make our images as squeaky-clean as they can be. But it’s international sport and, in the heat of the battle, sometimes emotion can get the better of you. A lot of us wear our hearts on our sleeves, and as hard as we try, we make a mistake every now and then.
As a result of last summer’s tour, do you think the Indian crowds will be more difficult than usual?
I don’t think they’ll be any different from any other tours. One thing that’ll help – and certainly has helped the relationships already – was the fact that a lot of the Australian players played in the Indian Premier League (IPL). We shared dressing-rooms with some of the guys we were in the heat of battle with here last year. That in itself will go a long way to bringing the teams, and their relationships, a lot closer. Throughout the IPL, when I turned up to play a game in Calcutta (Kolkata) against Indian players, the crowds were cheering for me ’cos I was part of their home team. It was pretty clear once the IPL got under way that the crowds were there to watch good cricket and not worry about some of the stuff that might have happened during the Australian summer.
Why do you think things got so heated between you and the Indian press after the Sydney Test?
Because we won the game – pure and simple. If we hadn’t won, there wouldn’t have been anywhere near the backlash or negativity towards the Australian team. If it had been a draw, maybe there might have been one little article, or column, written by somebody. We had the Indian team captain stand up in his press conference and say he didn’t think we’d played in the spirit of the game – that got everything started. Unfortunately for me, and for the team, I’d done my press conference first, so there was no right of reply. I went straight into the Symonds-Harbhajan hearing pretty much straight from the press conference and didn’t get out until 3am.

The INDIAN PREMIER LEAGUE (IPL)
Was the IPL really as big as it seemed?
Yeah, it was huge. [My team] the Knight Riders played Bangalore in the first game and the opening ceremony went on forever. The glitz and the glamour made it so different for players. I was only there for the first four weeks, and the first two weeks of that were training and preparation, but
I enjoyed it. I’ll be good to go back and play again.
Did the Indian crowds take to you?
They did, and speaking to all the guys it was the same right around the country, with Matthew Hayden and Mike Hussey at Chennai and Brett and quite a few of the boys up at Mohali. It was a club-atmosphere type of thing, where it didn’t matter if you were an Australian, a Pakistani or a South African. As long as you were part of their team, fans took you on board and embraced you, which was nice.
Make any mates in the dressing-rooms?
Definitely, yeah. I was lucky to have John Buchanan as coach and Matthew Mott, the NSW coach, as assistant coach; I had
a really good team. I became good friends with Brendon McCullum from New Zealand, as well as David Hussey from Victoria – I’d not had much to do with him, so to get to know him was invaluable. Also, (Sourav) Ganguly was my captain and Ishant Sharma, who I had a few battles with throughout the summer, was in my dressing-room as well. It was really different for me, having not played much county cricket, to be sharing a changing-room with other international players. It was a lot of fun.
What was the most ridiculous thing you saw on or off the field during the IPL?
Brendon McCullum’s innings in the first game was just incredible: 158 or something (spot-on Ricky, 158 not out off 73 balls). It wasn’t just the fact that he got that many, it was the shots he hit. He was hitting the ball back out of the stadium, hitting the top railing on the top of the grandstand. I spent a bit of time in the middle with him that night, and there were some huge hits.
Do you think we’ll end up with two groups of Australian international players, those on Cricket Australia (CA) contracts and those only good enough for an IPL contract?
It could happen. Even last year, you had guys not originally contracted to the IPL teams, like Shaun Marsh, who got an opportunity once the CA players left for the West Indies. Some of them, Shaun especially, did remarkably well. CA has got rules in place limiting the number of CA-contracted players in each IPL team to two. That will restrict the number of Australians playing in the IPL.

THE FUTURE OF CRICKET
Do you and the players enjoy Twenty20?
We do now. The more we’ve played, the more we’ve enjoyed it. I was pretty outward with my thoughts at the beginning. I thought Twenty20 was going to be used more as promotional material for the longer versions of the game. Then it became very popular and, all of a sudden, there was a Twenty20 World Cup. The IPL’s there, the Indian Cricket League’s there and England are doing a similar thing. There’s so much interest in the game. It’s going to be really interesting where the whole Twenty20 game goes in the next couple of years.
Do you ever come off after a Twenty20 game and think: “Gee, that was quick. I still feel like playing a game of cricket.”
Yes, I did in the IPL, because I played two games when I got out first ball. I walked off feeling like it was just a warm-up. It does go very quickly, and it goes even more quickly when you’re captain.
You’d have fewer calculations to worry about in the field, though, wouldn’t you?
Actually, you have to think about it more. When a bowler’s in the middle of a spell in a one-day game, all you’re thinking about is whether you bowl him six or seven overs and save him for three or four at the end. But with Twenty20, you bowl him for one over and see if he gets a wicket. If he doesn’t, you need to save him for when a new batsman comes in. Take someone like Brett Lee, who’s an out-and-out impact bowler. You might bowl him one over with the new ball, and if he doesn’t get a wicket there, you save him for an over in the middle, when they’re going to start the slog; you want him to bowl a couple at the end as well. So as silly as it sounds, you’re thinking more about rotations in 20-over cricket than you are in 50-over cricket.
Will Twenty20 kill off 50-over cricket?
I really hope not. I’ve said from the start that I see the 20-over game as being really dangerous for international cricket if it’s not handled properly. What it’s done already is attract new people to the game. More people to the game means participation numbers are going to go up, and when they go up more money comes into the game. So overall, Twenty20 cricket’s been great for cricket, but I’d hate to see a day when we’re not playing as many 50-over games because we’re playing more Twenty20 games. It’s probably inevitable that it will happen, but hopefully we won’t be playing 10 fewer 50-over games each year. It might be one three-game series that goes but, hopefully, none of those games will go. It’s in the hands of all the boards to ensure that doesn’t happen. I’m a bit of a traditionalist with the game; I want every young Australian kid to have the same opportunities that I had to represent Australia. We’ll see if that eventuates.
Is there a chance the public could experience Twenty20 overload?
Some pretty special things were done in the IPL. Apart from McCullum’s knock, I saw a few other 100s that were amazing. Gilly made a really good 100, Symmo made a great ton and Sohail Tanvir from Pakistan got 6-14 in one game – to get six wickets in four overs is pretty amazing. There are a lot of amazing things that happen in the 20-over game; what I’m a bit worried about is that if those sorts of performances happen more regularly, people will get used to seeing them and they won’t be special anymore. The game’s got the potential to become stale quite quickly.
You’ve made strong comments about the need to maintain an attacking, entertaining approach to Test cricket. You even said Test cricket isn’t healthy. What did you mean by that?
Outside of Australia, Test cricket isn’t healthy in a lot of countries. In Australia, England and South Africa, Test crowds are pretty good, but during our last tour in the Caribbean, the crowds were disgraceful, and that worries me. The problem is not so much the actual format of the game, it’s more to do with the conditions we play in. The wickets have been so flat that it’s been a bit too easy for bat to dominate ball. The beauty of Test cricket is the amount of bouncers that are bowled, and batsmen being on the back foot. People want entertainment. If the wickets are flat, it’s almost like a net session for the batsmen.
The Windies crowds used to scream for blood when they had their fast bowlers on.
Yeah, and they’ve still got guys who can bowl fast enough, but it’s that hard to get the ball up on some of the wickets they play on. We played in Antigua and Jamaica this year, and Jamaica especially was probably as slow a Test wicket as I’ve ever played on. The West Indian crowds don’t want to see that. They want to see us batsmen on our backsides every now and then, and ducking and weaving and getting out of the way. The only time they got to see that was when Brett Lee came out to bat and the bowlers really got stuck into him – all of a sudden the crowds were into it and enjoying themselves.

CAPTAINCY AND OTHER CONCERNS
When Michael Clarke took over as captain for the last couple of one-dayers in the Windies, the Aussie players described his captaincy style as similar to yours. Was he copying you or is he just a natural leader?
He’s a natural leader. All leaders are born – there aren’t any created ones, at least not ones who are any good. He’s a natural at it, though I’d like to think he’s sat back and had a look at what I’ve done. I’ve been really close to him since he first came into the team, and I’ve seen a lot of me in him. The way he’s played, his personality – a lot of things are similar. We’ve all learned from people we’ve played under, or from great players we’ve played with. It’s funny, because somebody said they even thought he’s sounded like me in some of his press conferences.
But imitation is the highest form of flattery…
Yeah [laughs], I might have to try to bash that out of him before long. No, he’s a good young bloke who knows where he’s going.
He’s watched you grow up in the public eye, hasn’t he?
Yeah, he’s a lot smarter than I was at the same age. And that’s the way sport’s going, you know?
You were in an ad saying an innings in Delhi is as hard as doing the household chores. True?
I’d better start painting a slightly different picture of myself in adverts. As my wife said at the time, she couldn’t think of anything more unlikely for me to do than housework.
You recently changed management. Why?
The main reason was Rianna and I started our own charity foundation. My new manager is on the board of that, and it didn’t make sense to have all of our charity work under one umbrella and all of my personal business stuff under another. My new manager, James Henderson, is a guy I’ve known for the best part of 12 years, so it wasn’t a huge change.
Cricket captain, world’s best batsman, charity man, new father – how do you do it all?
The hardest thing I’ve found over the years is finding time for cricket and family, and for business and sponsorship stuff on the side. Juggling everything and getting everything right is tough, but I’ve been doing it for a long time. That’s what Michael’s going to find out. Even now he’s reasonably busy, but if and when he steps into my role, he’s going to find it’s the hardest thing.
Do you like being busy?
Yeah, I’m not that good at sitting back and doing nothing. When I’ve got nothing on, I find I end up thinking about cricket too much, which is pretty dangerous. Because we play so much, it’s really good to have other things to occupy our time, so we’re not just sitting back thinking about the next innings or the next game.
If the Kangaroos AFL club relocates, will you still support them?
Absolutely. I’m a diehard Kangaroos fan, obviously, being the No.1 ticket holder.
Can’t you get them to move down to Tassie?
It looks like the Tassie dream might have been sunk again, with (AFL CEO) Andrew Demetriou wanting to give $30 million for a team out at Blacktown (in Western Sydney). Let’s hope Tassie does get its own team one day, without a relocated side.
And if they want you to be the No.1 fan of the new Tassie side…
Then I’ve got a bit more of a dilemma on my hands.