At the Close of Play
COPYRIGHT
HarperCollinsPublishers 77-85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
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First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2013
FIRST EDITION
© Ricky Ponting and Geoff Armstrong 2013
Thematic features © Ricky Ponting and James Henderson 2013
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780007544752
Ebook Edition © NOVEMBER 2013 ISBN: 9780007544776
Version: 2014-07-23
For my beautiful wife Rianna and our gorgeous children Emmy and Matisse
And for Mum, Dad, Drew and Renee
Thanks to you all for always being there for me
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Insights
The Ponting Foundation
Giving back
My routine
Prologue Invermay Park
1. THE FIRST INNINGS
1 Backyard Cricket
2 Playing with Dad
3 Out of Tasmania
4 Punter
5 In the Company of Boonie
6 An Angry Young Man
7 Making the Team
8 Retaliate First
9 The Hundred That Got Away
10 Best Seat in the House
11 High Security
12 Dropped
13 Hope Builds, Fear Destroys
2. AT THE CREASE
14 Solidarity Forever
15 I’m Not Going, I’m Staying
16 Betting Rings and Broken Helmets
17 The Wrong Place at the Wrong Time
18 Starting Over
19 Mateship Matters
20 Team First
21 Good Versus Great
22 Turning Pro
23 From Harbhajan to Headingley
24 Love Comes to Town
25 Three Amigos
3. AT THE HELM
26 Captain and Player
27 Swimming Between the Flags
28 Leading Our Defence of the World Cup
29 One Game After Another
30 Character
31 Doing the Right Thing
32 The Last Frontier
33 Playing with Brian
34 Behind the Times
35 Helmet On, Helmet Off
36 Resurgence
37 Test Century
38 No Fear
39 Mind Games
40 Getting Dizzy
41 Ugly Australians?
42 Ashes Regained
43 Most Tough Guys Cry
44 WC2007
45 Good Times
46 Zero Tolerance
47 Irreplaceable
48 Over-Rated
49 Last Man Standing
50 The Old Boy
51 Six Days in Potchefstroom
52 Public Enemy No. 1
53 Mug or Magician
4. AT THE CLOSE OF PLAY
54 Tactics and Tweets
55 Execution
56 Punted Out
57 Something New
58 Under Pressure
59 Matisse
60 Edge of the Abyss
61 Thanks for the Memories
62 It’s Time
63 End of the Journey
Epilogue Winding Down
CAREER RECORD
Picture Section
List of Searchable Terms
Acknowledgments
Final word
About the Publisher
Giving back
My routine
The baggy green
Bravery
Family
Life on the road
Planning
Mentors
Being in the zone
Building a team
Practice makes perfect
Honesty
Look at those around you
Role models
Loyalty & trust
Feedback
The media
Technique
Patriotism
Mateship
On golf
Brilliance
Communication
Mentoring
Tactical advantage
Criticism
Leadership
Captaincy
Team song
Coaching
Partnership, pressure & patience
Concentration
Celebrating success
Match-ups
Delegation
The Ashes
Great Australian players of Test cricket
Best ODI Australian team
Mumbai retrospective
Loss
Playing fresh
Top five English players
Winning
Losing
Unsung heroes
Top five Indian players
Favourite international players
How the Ponting Foundation makes a difference
The Ponting Foundation is dedicated to doing everything possible to help young Australians and their families beat cancer.
It provides funding for a wide range of essential services that comfort and nurture young Australians with cancer, while providing emotional support and financial assistance for their family.
Through alliances with some of Australia’s leading cancer charities and research groups, Ricky has used his profile to influence widespread community engagement to raise important incremental funds for specific charity programs, hospitals and ground-breaking research projects engaged in the fight against cancer in Australia’s children and youth.
The Foundation also funds programs that assist in the care and well-being of the wider family unit as they support their child through illness.
How you can help
Make a donation
Visit www.pontingfoundation.com.au and make an online donation. Donations of $2 or more are fully tax deductable for Australian residents.
Get Involved with the Biggest Game of Cricket
The Biggest Game of Cricket is the Ponting Foundation’s major annual fundraising activity. Harnessing the pride of Australia Day, BGOC is a community based event with thousands of games being played and events all around Australia. Visit www.biggestgameofcricket.com.au for all the details.
Corporate partners — building pride through great partnerships
The Ponting Foundation sincerely appreciates the generous support of its corporate partners and invites interested companies to join the corporate team.
Become a Ponting XI member
A key pillar for the long-term success of the Ponting Foundation has been the creation of the ‘Ponting XI’.
The substantial donations made by members of the Ponting XI have ensured the Foundation remains fully self-sufficient, allowing funds raised by other means to be distributed to the Foundation’s beneficiaries.
By joining this thoughtful and generous group of leading philanthropists, you will be partnering with the Foundation and importantly, the wider healthcare community, in helping young Australians and families beat cancer.
Please contact the Ponting Foundation at
info@pontingfoundation.com.au for more details.
With Prof Murray Norris and Prof Michelle Haber AM at the Ricky and Rianna Ponting Molecular Diagnostic Laboratory, Children’s Cancer Institute, at the University of NSW, Sydney.
The issue of childhood cancer is something very dear to the hearts of Rianna and myself since a hospital visit we made together back in 2002. Phil Kearns, a good friend who was involved at the Children’s Cancer Institute Australia (CCIA) invited us to visit the Sydney Children’s Hospital to meet with some of the many children and their families in the oncology ward. Listening to each family’s story was one of the most emotional experiences of our lives. We were deeply saddened by the stories we heard but at the same time overwhelmed by the commitment of the families, doctors and nurses to help these children fight the biggest battle of their young lives. Following our visit, we sat outside the Children’s Hospital and with tears in our eyes made a commitment to one another to do everything possible to improve the lives of young Australians with cancer and their families. We worked as ambassadors of the CCIA helping to raise money to fund research into Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia, the most common cancer in children.
It was through our work with the CCIA that we realised we were in a unique position to make a real difference. After very careful consideration, we decided to establish the Ponting Foundation with the aim of raising funds for the benefit of young Australians with cancer and their families. Since 2008, we have been steadily doing our best to give back to those most in need. We have partnered with a variety of incredible organisations, including the CCIA, Redkite, the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, the David Collins Leukaemia Foundation and the National Institute of Integrative Medicine, to spread our fundraising to the areas that we believe need the most focus. We visit hospitals regularly, spending time with the children and their families as well as meeting doctors, researchers and nurses, who always teach us something new about the issues of childhood cancer.
With my retirement from cricket, we intend to become even more active in our work, not only from a fundraising perspective but just as importantly, from an advocacy and awareness point of view. We need to do more for our children to protect their future. Cancer is the major killer of our children and we have to do everything we can to increase the survival rates especially around the uncommon forms of cancer. Rianna and I couldn’t do this on our own. We have an incredible Board that includes some of Australia’s most respected business people, including Trevor O’Hoy, Stephen Roberts, Ray Horsburgh, Ian Foote, Katie McNamara, Steven Ivak and James Henderson. Our founding Chairperson, Margaret Jackson, was an amazing contributor as are our Ponting XI members, including Christian Johnston, Peter de Rauch, Sir Ron Brierley, Philip Allison, Sir Michael Parkinson, Honey Bacon, and David and Kelli Lundberg.
Here’s a simple summary of the routine that I went through every time I batted for Australia.
Last thing the night before a game or when I expected to bat
• Write a list of what I needed to do out in the middle
– Watch the ball
– Play straight
– Loud calls
– Be patient
– Be positive in attack and defence
– Bat for a long time
– Make 100
– Be man of the match
– Be man of the series
• Read this list out loud after writing it, underline each item when read and visualise each point for tomorrow
• Write a list of each bowler and how they will try to bowl
– Visualise how they will try to get me out
• Then switch off the light and go to sleep
Before going out to bat
• Get ready the same way each and every time
• Sit down and watch the openers with my gear all in same positions around me — ready to go
• Sit with a bottle of water and chew three pieces of gum
• Sip the water when needed
• As soon as a wicket falls, remove the gum and put it aside. Drink water and leave for the middle
Walking out to the middle
• Display energy and walk to the middle fairly quickly
• Do three or four butt kicks with each leg
• Play a number of shadow ‘straight drives’ while walking
• Flick my wrists with bat in hand — both hands
On arrival at the crease
• Take guard and get middle
• Clear all the rubbish on the wicket around the crease line — must be perfectly clear
• Walk down and look closely at the wicket
• Identify the area that I think the bowler can bowl a good ball
• Make sure that area is totally clear
• Move to the side of the pitch and do my hamstring stretches with bat in both hands
• Walk back to the crease while observing the field placement
• Take my grip and take my stance in the crease
Bowler’s run-up and delivery
• Say ‘watch the ball’ to myself twice
— halfway through run-up and just before release of the ball
• Look at the identified area down the wicket and look up at the bowler’s release of the ball
• Then whatever happens, happens
• Switch my mind off completely until bowler is back near top of run-up
• Switch back on and start this delivery routine again
SO MUCH OF WHO I AM is where I came from.
It started here and in a lot of ways it’s right that it ends here in these dressing rooms. I’m two months retired from Test cricket and back playing for the Mowbray Eagles. Back where it all began.
I entered these rooms as a boy and left them 30 years later. I wore the baggy green cap at the crease and the Australian captain’s jacket at the toss. I wore one-day colours too in an era when we were unbeatable at World Cup cricket. I wore them all with pride, at all times striving to be the best I could, but if you stripped all that away you would find what matters most and what kept me going: cricket.
It is simple really. I loved the game, the rituals, the fierce competition and the equally fierce mateship it promoted.
Dressing rooms, hotels, cricket grounds and aeroplanes are the places where my life has been lived.
The rooms are our refuge. For Test players they’re a place away from the cameras, journalists, crowds and constant glare. For club cricketers they’re a sanctuary where you can be with your mates away from work and the grind of daily life. You check in Saturday morning and you check out Saturday night a little wobbly from the long day and a few drinks after the game.
Every club cricketer has got a dressing room routine, sometimes it’s hard to pick the pattern in the mess, other times it’s obvious. Me? I’m not neat, I take the bats out and stand them up to clear some room in the jumble of the kit bag. The gloves are numbered, but in no order and as the game goes on things spread out further. Matthew Hayden said I spread my gear round like a ‘scrub turkey’ but he was almost as bad; Justin Langer, Mike Hussey they were like me; others were neat as pins. Damien Martyn was, and Michael Clarke and Brad Haddin verge on the obsessive, everything laid out like it’s a display in a store window. Marto would mark the edges of his territory with tape and warn us not to let our mess trespass within. In different grounds we had different seating patterns that established themselves over the years.
Spreading the bats and placing your bag somewhere is about marking your turf, setting out the boundaries of your space.
From the time I was small I was drawn to the equipment. The bats, the shoes, the gloves and the pads … I was always looking at what somebody else had, always picking up bats and feeling them. They are, I suppose, the tools of the trade. If I’d followed through on that building apprenticeship when I left school I wonder if I’d have had the same romantic attachment to what was in the toolbox.
Occasionally you’ll meet a cricketer who couldn’t give a toss, but most of us, particularly batsmen, are obsessed with our gear. Huss would carry a set of scales with him to ensure the bat was an exact weight. If it was over, out would come the sandpaper and he would start to scrape away. I’d give him a bit of grief about it, but when he wasn’t around I’d weigh mine too. Most of us arrive with an arsenal of bats: the lucky one, the one that’s almost broken in, the one that’s there and about …
The secret to a good one is how it feels in your hands and the soft tonk sound a new ball makes on good willow. Your ear tells you. I suppose a guitar or a piano is the same, but you’d have to ask a musician if that’s right.
My game bat never comes out until the morning of the match, it never gets an appearance at practice. The others are works in progress, bits of willow that will, with a bit of tuning and knocking, make it to game-bat status one day. Like players, bats have to earn a place in a game.
WE PONTINGS ARE WORKING-CLASS PEOPLE from a working-class part of Launceston and our entertainment consisted of footy in winter, cricket in summer and golf whenever we could. It was the same with everybody we knew.
From the time I was old enough to ride my bike past the end of the street I would come down to watch the Mowbray Eagles play. I was always drawn to the cricket ground and the dressing room. Uncle Greg played for the Eagles before he moved on to the Shield side and then to Test cricket. Maybe it was him who got me down there the first time, but I knew Dad had played for the same team and most of the adults in my life had something to do with the club. Every Saturday morning I’d be up early, have a quick breakfast and then climb onto my BMX and race down to here or wherever they were playing. If somebody was around I’d have a hit in the nets while the old blokes of the district went about the serious business in the middle, but the best of the times were in their half-lit dressing rooms.
When they were on the field I’d come in and go through the kits. Weighing the bats in my hands, feeling the grips and the balance and examining the grain. Looking back it was pretty rudimentary gear, but at the time it seemed possessed of some sort of magic. I’d try on the gloves and the inners that were way too big for me and I’d memorise where everything was before I touched it to make sure it went back exactly there, so when they came in hot and sweaty from a couple of hours on the field everything would be where they’d left it, and I’d be in the corner where they expected me to be.
I was small and could hide quietly in a corner so you wouldn’t necessarily know I was there. I would spend hours there listening to them talk about cricket as they drank beer and cooled down after play. It was a conversation I longed to join and one that when I did I’ve stayed engaged with all my life. Back then I was soaking it up like a sponge. Listening to their deep, gruff voices cracking jokes and weaving stories about that place out in the middle where I would long to be.
The Mowbray boys had a reputation for being the hardest cricketers around. When we played Launceston or Riverside it was almost class war and the teams from the other side of the river used to quietly dread crossing into our territory. After the game, however, they were always welcome for a drink in the rooms.
Sometimes Dad would drag me home early, other times someone would say ‘come on young fella’ and throw my bike in the back of their car and drive me home. Being the first to arrive and last to leave is a habit I’ve maintained ever since those early days.
And today I’m back here at the cricket club that started it all.
When, as captain of the Australian Test team, I would hand players their first baggy green I would tell them that they were following in a grand tradition and to think about the people who had worn it before, but I would also ask them to think about all the others out there at club and state level and how much it would mean to them.
Cricket’s given me everything but it’s taken things from me too. I’m a Mowbray boy and it’s here I feel at home and it’s probably the greatest regret of my life that the game took me away from here too soon. As a boy I just wanted to be one of the men in this dressing room, but I suppose the trade-off wasn’t too bad. Instead of sharing victory with these men I shared it with some of the great cricketers of our time and some of my greatest mates. Matty Hayden, Marto, Lang, Gilly, Warne, Pidge … we ruled the world for a while there, climbed the mountain and we were as close as men can be. Having said that, I am just as close and just as comfortable with the people I met in these rooms when I was still a boy. The blokes who put their hands on my shoulder and pointed me in the right direction.
NATURALLY I’M THE FIRST in the rooms at Invermay Park this morning. Had to open up myself. It’s fitting in a way as I’ve always been the first to arrive. The last to leave. Lately I’d found myself looking up expecting to see Gilly or Marto or Lang only to find they’ve gone and the spot that was theirs has been taken by someone else. One by one they had all left the dressing room until I was the last one left.
Rianna, my wife, has a way of putting things in perspective. When everybody had become emotional at my retirement ahead of the Perth Test she said, ‘He’s not dead yet people, it’s just cricket,’ and I love her for that. I love that sense of balance she brings. Recently she came to me and asked if I had really made that many Test runs. She’d seen something on television. Sometimes I think she’s the only person who doesn’t know these things. (There are whole villages in the backblocks of India who know more about my career.) And I love her even more for that.