Ashes 2011

by Gideon Haigh

  27 DECEMBER 2010

  RICKY PONTING

  White-Coat Fever

  Every man has his weakness. With Shane Warne, it's blondes. With Ian Chappell, it's Ian Botham – and vice versa. With Ricky Ponting, it's umpires. Other players suffer white-line fever; he has white-coat fever. Few cricketers, and certainly no current international captain, has a poorer reputation: in the presence of officialdom that has somehow crossed him, he is never knowingly outstropped.

  So when the red mist descended today and Ponting challenged the authority of Aleem Dar, it was not without a backdrop or context. Australia's leader is a very great cricketer indeed; he also has a tendency to treat umpires not as respected representatives of the Laws of Cricket, but like malfunctioning appliances.

  There were a thousand pities to it, but among the deepest was that the incident was so needless. The match did not hinge on whether Kevin Pietersen had edged Ryan Harris to Brad Haddin; it was at best a speculative appeal, in which the bowler for one had hardly joined, and ended up costing Australia next to nothing. Ponting's anger was a day late. His plight is the fault of Australia's batsmen, who made belated Christmas presents of their wickets on Boxing Day.

  So it evoked the pressure under which Ponting has played this series, a great player in hard times, the last survivor of a dynasty, a final vestige of former greatness. But it was also not out of character. In fact, if anything was going to push Ponting's buttons, it was a decision with which he did not agree, and an official in the wrong place at the wrong time. Call it displaced anger.

  With certain umpires, even good ones, Ponting has developed unpleasant histories. The capable Mark Benson, who first incurred his ire during the DLF Cup in August 2006 for having the courage to reverse a decision, retired last summer after a Test at Adelaide where Ponting rounded on him for rejecting a caught-behind appeal against Shivnarine Chanderpaul, a decision upheld by the technology.

  Aleem Dar, the ICC's umpire of the year, first suffered the sharp edge of Ponting's tongue in April 2006, when Australia's captain harangued him in Chittagong over a decision involving Aftab Ahmed. He experienced it again in England's second innings at Brisbane, as Ponting audibly condemned a decision not to grant his claim of a low catch from Alastair Cook as 'piss-weak umpiring', even though Dar was merely the messenger delivering an off-field verdict.

  And these are old, old stories. In his own diary of the 2005 Ashes, Ponting documents such episodes as growling at Billy Bowden for not giving Simon Jones out lbw at Edgbaston ('What was wrong with that?') and chewing out Steve Bucknor for giving Damien Martyn out lbw at Old Trafford ('That was a diabolical decision. He smashed that.'). In his account of that series, Ponting's bête noire Duncan Fletcher accused Australia's captain of a policy of conscious intimidation: 'Whenever a decision went against Australia during the series, did you notice how Ponting would invariably walk straight up to the umpire and challenge his decision using overbearing body language?' A policy probably dignifies it; it is, more accurately, a habit. But bad habits poison. When Ponting was fined after upbraiding umpire Norman Malcolm for failing to give Patrick Browne out at Grenada in June 2008, he responded to chidings from Cricket Australia dismissively: 'I don't think I'm ever going to be able to just stay mute, shrug my shoulders and accept bad mistakes as part of the game. That's not me.' He wasn't kidding.

  Ponting doesn't bear sole responsibility for today's events. In his attitude to umpires, he has been regrettably indulged. Told he had made a grammatical error, the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund is said to have replied: 'I am King of the Romans and above all grammar.' Authority has failed to disabuse Ponting of his parallel conviction where umpires are concerned. Had the ICC and/or Cricket Australia taken firmer action against Ponting earlier in his career, there might have been no incident today.

  One additional factor should be taken into consideration: the dynamic at Perth, where Australia came off the better for a Test visibly shorter of beg-pardons than others in recent years, and where nostalgic local observers felt their sap rise at the sight of an Aussie team going lip-for-lip with an opposition again. The chief executive of the Australian Cricketers' Association, Paul Marsh, went so far as to suggest that the home team had been victims of political correctness – that since Australia's ugly Sydney Test with India three years ago, and the public odium in which the team languished afterwards, Ponting's team had lost their combative edge. 'I think there's no doubt the team's performance has been affected,' Marsh said. 'Hard aggressive cricket is in the Australian team's DNA and unfortunately the players started second-guessing their natural instincts in the heat of battle for fear of reprisal from Cricket Australia or a public backlash from the vocal minority.'

  It would not be a surprise if such sentiments found a receptive ear or two in the Australian side, not least with the captain whom in January 2008 bore the brunt of the criticism, sententious op-eds, resignation demands, calls for the revival of public flogging, etc. To be fair, such remarks actually played pretty well in the media too, which enjoys stories emphasising that Test is a four-letter word. But behind vocal minorities sometimes lurk silent majorities, of the kind now deliberating on the legacy of this great cricketer. Their verdict in this matter will be as significant as the ICC's.

  28 DECEMBER 2010

  Day 3

  Close of play: Australia 2nd innings 169–6

  (BJ Haddin 11*, MG Johnson 6*, 66 overs)

  For a ground so huge, the MCG empties with remarkable speed. Within five minutes of stumps tonight, the third-day crowd for the Fourth Test of 68,733 had virtually cleared out, leaving the arena to the human bollards of the security staff. While how many will return tomorrow can only be guessed at, one thing is all but guaranteed: they will be either English or masochists.

  At the close, Australia were 246 runs from making England bat again, with four wickets remaining. They collapsed today as Hemingway once said a man goes broke: slowly, then all at once, losing five wickets for 59 runs in thirty overs after tea, being already a man down after an injury to Ryan Harris. The Ashes are so close for Andrew Strauss that the smoke is in Ricky Ponting's eyes.

  It will be a deserved victory. Coach Andy Flower described Adelaide as a 'perfect Test'. Yet his team has here almost improved on perfection, murdering Australia on the first day, and burying them the next two. They could retain the Ashes at Sydney by turning up for the toss and spending the next week at the beach.

  There was no hint of later hecticness when play resumed, and Jonathan Trott continued on his own unassuming way. One straight drive from Hilfenhaus summed up Trott's whole game: simple, compact, unostentatious, effective. There remains a suspicion of vulnerability when the pace is on, but this has never been a pitch to test that conjecture. When he's in the mood, he just stays and stays and stays, his objective of long-term settlement somehow expressed in the repeated furrowing of his guard, where he might be intending to plant a row of beans.

  England's last five wickets were rounded up for 69, bringing on an early lunch, more or less inevitable after Prior and Bresnan fell in the first three-quarters of an hour. Amid this good Australian news, however, was sprinkled bad. Harris limped off in his fourth over, looking as though he had stepped on a starfish in a rock pool; it transpired he was feeling the effect of a stress fracture in his left ankle, which will make him an unlucky casualty of this series. Just nine days ago, the greathearted Harris was celebrating his successful campaign against a knee injury; now he begins a new battle.

  Despite the total on which England was converging, progress was anything but monotonous. The pitch continued to offer the bowlers just a little, the ball beating the bat every few overs; the bounce endangered Swann's helmet more than once. When Siddle bowled Anderson to claim his sixth wicket for 75, England had stretched their lead to 415 with less than half the Test match over. It also meant that more than half the batsmen in the match had been dismissed in single figures: indicative of conditions in which early survival called for some
luck.

  In their second dig, Australia veritably raced to 50 in ten overs, half the time it took them on the first day, thanks to a combination of attacking fields and overeager bowling. The bat was not beaten until Bresnan came on after forty minutes, bent his back and went past Watson's surprised outside edge. Good teams create opportunities under these circumstances, and England conjured one brilliantly. In Swann's second over, Hughes was caught on his heels by Watson's late call for a single to cover; Watson's lumbering gait sometimes seems to mislead partners about his intentions.

  Trott, unwearied by the 46 singles, 20 twos and 7 threes he had run in more than seven hours, moved smartly to scoop and deliver, and for the second time this summer broke an Australian opening stand. The key, though, was Prior's swiftness in meeting the throw and directing it on to the stumps – as Hilfenhaus did not yesterday, when Trott was diving for the crease to beat Ponting's return. When bad cricket meets good cricket, the result is not always foregone, and here was a matter of perhaps nine inches – but that was enough.

  In the early stages of Australia's innings, Tremlett bowled finely without reward, in that way of his where there might almost not be a batsman at the other end. He walks back, runs in, lets go, follows through – and the cycle repeats, irrespective of outcome, except on the occasion of a wicket, when a shy smile is revealed. After Prior and Strauss entered into earnest discussion about calling for a review when Hughes (12) possibly grazed one down the leg side, they looked up to find Tremlett, back turned, already taking those slow, measured steps to the end of his run.

  As the session progressed, it became hard, austere, patient cricket from both batsmen and bowlers, Watson guarding one of those starts he is inclined to waste, Ponting preserving the vital spark of his captaincy. In theory at this stage, Australia could still regain the Ashes. In theory, though, the referral system is also a good idea; it is in practice that it messes with one's head.

  Two decisions were epistemological case studies. Ponting (2) was hit just above the knee-roll when the ball jagged back from Anderson and he was given not out by Tony Hill. On replay, the ball could be seen to be just trimming the bails. Had Hill given it and Ponting called for a referral, he would have been out, as there weren't sufficient grounds for overturning the decision; as Hill did not, it would have been not out in the event of a Strauss referral.

  Shortly after tea, by contrast, Watson (52) padded up as Bresnan swerved the ball back, and Hill upheld the appeal. When Watson sought a review, the replay showed the ball to be barely grazing the top of the stumps, but he was sent on his way, again because of insufficient evidence for a change of mind. Watson, who in his own mind has never been dismissed lbw, vanished from the ground still sunk in thought – not, for him, a natural state.

  With the ramparts breached, England plunged into the Australian citadel. Bresnan reaped the rewards for persistence, unexpected pace and expected reverse swing, enabled by an abrasive square. He obtained movement into Ponting to bowl him off an inside edge, then movement away from a fretful Hussey that drew a fatal check-drive to short cover.

  The latest chapter in Clarke Agonistes was then hard to watch. As Swann obtained a pleasing drift, Australia's vice-captain made a painfully poor start, missed at 2 by Prior as he was drawn out of his ground. Concreted into his crease thereafter, his strokeplay grew similarly circumscribed: given one low full toss on the pads, which a year ago would have been four, Clarke could do no more than drill to mid-on. It was almost a relief when Swann floated one across his vision from round the wicket and he pushed too hard, being smartly taken by Strauss at second slip.

  After an early mishook which fell just short of a diving Tremlett at fine leg, Steve Smith played some crisp and original shots, one back cut for four with the bat at forty-five degrees tucked under his chin. But with three overs of the day remaining, he dragged Anderson on while attempting an impertinent pull, rendering the game all over bar the shouting – although of that, if you are an English fan, there may be quite a lot tomorrow.

  28 DECEMBER 2010

  RICKY PONTING

  36 and All That

  Ricky Ponting began the Fourth Test on the brink of a unique achievement: with victory in Melbourne, he would enter a club of one comprising those who have played in a hundred Test wins. He will end the game with a unique non-achievement, as thrice a losing Ashes skipper, beaten here about as badly as a Test captain can be: outplayed, outgeneraled, out twice for little, even out-earned, having forfeited 40 per cent of his match fee to the ICC exchequer.

  As matters stand, in fact, Ponting's chances of another shot at his milestone are complicated by his new millstone. To lose the Ashes twice might be thought misfortune; thrice looks like carelessness. But more than that, having been deserted by luck at the toss and by his sang-froid with the umpires, he finally and irrefutably lost his batting today.

  Since Brisbane, Australia's batting coach Justin Langer has maintained a nonstop, low-level patter about how well the captain is hitting them – brilliant, better than ever, ready for action. Well, yes, one might say: in the nets, he gets to face his own bowlers. In the middle, Langer can hardly have missed his old confrere's lack of balance. Anxious to cover off stump, Ponting has been jumping into, and outside of, the line of the ball; moving so far across, in fact, as to expose his leg stump, down which side he has twice nicked fatally. His downswing, never the acme of straightness, has grown as crooked as a barrel of fish-hooks. A door need only be slightly off its hinges in order to stop closing properly; likewise a defensive technique.

  The heart told you to expect a big fuck-off hundred this afternoon; the head anticipated something gutsy and cussed that might go on a while but would prove to no avail. And this has been an Ashes series played very much in the head, in the meticulousness of England's preparation, and the illusions of Australia's response.

  Ponting arrived today, of course, to find the MCG still subtly reverberating from the uproar of his contretemps with Aleem Dar. Among the commentariat, in the blogocracy and Twittersphere, enabled by numberless clicks on YouTube, the ICC's decision to fine Ponting an amount equivalent to a couple of his well-dressed wife's ritzy handbags was being debated.

  The captain confined himself to old media, getting his 'side of the story' out on ABC radio and Channel Nine, although not exactly doing himself that many favours. While apologising and expressing his appreciation of the umpires, he also indulged in some special pleading. 'I had a chance to look at it again last night,' Ponting insisted. 'I still, in my heart and in my mind, believe that he inside-edged that ball. I think if you look at the replay properly, in the way that it needs to be looked at, I think everyone will understand that Hot Spot mark wasn't a long way away from where the ball passed the bat... but that's irrelevant now. The decision was made and I've got to get on with it now.'

  These were strangely obdurate propositions. 'If you look at the replay properly'? 'The way it needs to be looked at'? 'Everyone will understand'? Says who? And given that, as Ponting acquiesced, this excuse for an argument was 'irrelevant', why bother trying to make it? The answer is that Ponting is a proud, stubborn man. It has been a great quality. One sees it in the washed-out, worn-out, saggy baggy green that he would no sooner part with than the Légion d'honneur; one senses it in his ever wirier frame, toughened and tautened by a training regime that would daunt a man a decade his junior. But the stubbornness has now shaded into intransigence. He has been reduced on occasions this season to a kind of doublethink. Before this Test, for example, he ventured: 'I actually look at our lack of runs as a positive going forward. We just can't keep performing this badly.' Eh?

  Worse, 36-year-old Ponting has slipped into denial about his own game. He is averaging 28 in his last ten Tests. His failures and those of his vice-captain Michael Clarke have effectively ringbarked the Australian batting in each Test of this series, leaving decay to set in. At the start of the summer, Australia's selectors offered Ponting the chance to drop down the order t
o number four. He dismissed it. The selectors haven't gotten much right this series, but as he eked out 20 over 102 painful minutes today, Ponting was demonstrating their foresight.

  Every batsman is vulnerable during their first twenty balls. It's when they bat for 73 deliveries, as Ponting did today, and still look like they've just come in, that they are truly struggling. In the first innings, Ponting fetched a good delivery; in this second, he scarcely managed an authentic stroke before dragging Bresnan on. The nick on to the stumps, moreover, is one of batting's ugliest dismissals, making a mess of everything: bat, stumps, feet, mind. Ponting fell in such a fashion three times during last year's Ashes, including in the climactic Test at the Oval – it was somehow fitting today.

  It is not a backhanded compliment to say that the best part of Ponting's captaincy has been his batting. After all, batting successfully as a captain is a challenge that has defeated some great players: look at the vicissitudes of Mark Taylor's form, the sharp declines of Richie Richardson and Mahela Jayawardene. Ponting is not a hugely original tactician; nor, in later years, has he had the materiel at his disposal that gained Steve Waugh his great reputation. But his shadow has always been lengthened by his ability to inspire, empower, resist and rally with the bat, and his loss of that capacity diminishes him disproportionately.

  It seems impertinent to be talking of successors while such a great cricketer is still in harness, like arguing about the apportionment of an estate over a still-warm body. But as the slight frame of Australia's captain withdrew into the shadows of the Ponsford Stand today, there was the possibility we were witnessing another milestone: Ponting's last Test at the MCG.