I first came across Ricky Ponting in the summer of 1991/92 in Adelaide. He had come over on a scholarship from Launceston in Tasmania to spend a week at the Academy. He was 16 and I knew nothing about him.
At the same time there was a 2m hulk, called Paul Wilson, who kept knocking on my door, telling me he should be in the Academy (he later played one Test and a dozen ODIs for Australia). He was a strapping 20-year-old, a pace bowler and, because I’ve always worked on the philosophy that you can never have enough fast men, I invited Wilson in for a net against this young lad from Tasmania.
Wilson raced in, ran through the crease like most fast bowlers do, and hurled down a bouncer. Ricky hooked the ball in front of square-leg like a bullet. I turned to my colleague Richard Done and we looked at each other in sheer amazement. ”This bloke will play for Australia,” I said.
The next ball, Wilson was still trying to impress me. He went through the crease again, bowled it faster and shorter and Ricky hit it further. I think the club that sent Ricky over to Adelaide from Launceston had raised A$1 000 for him to make the trip. Australian cricket did pretty well out of that deal.
The next season Ponting came back and we chose him for a tour to South Africa. This was the first overseas side to visit the republic following their reintegration to world cricket. Ponting was 17, easily the youngest member of the party; his captain was Adam Gilchrist and I remember the second innings of our first game at the Wanderers in Johannesburg when we were playing against a side including Shaun Pollock and Mark Boucher.
For some reason our number three was suddenly incapacitated. Straightaway Ricky piped up: ”I’ll go in.”
We weren’t so sure about that. We felt we might be throwing him to the lions. But he was so keen we let him go. He hit a brilliant 60 and our liaison man turned to me and said: ”This boy will play for Australia.”
”I know,” I replied.
I have another memory of Ponting from just before that tour. The World Cup was about to start in Australia; Ricky had been training at the Adelaide Oval with the other Academy boys and he asked me whether he could stay behind rather than go home with the rest of them. ”Why?” I asked.
”Because the Indians are coming to practise here and I want to watch Tendulkar.”
Sachin Tendulkar was reputed to be the best, so Ponting wanted to learn from him. Even now he is always keen to learn more. That’s what’s good about him and all the champions in sport. I was happy to grant him my permission.
I know that this impression of Ricky as the diligent young student isn’t the whole story. He’s had his moments in a typically Australian way. He could be a tearaway as a youngster; that was all part of his growing up. In fact, I’m disappointed he’s only averaging 60 in Test cricket: he’s better than that. I wish Ricky had realised how good he could be earlier in his career when he was averaging a mere 40.
To give you another idea of how outstanding he was as a youngster, let me tell you about the ”bouncer sessions” we used to have in the indoor centre at the Adelaide Oval. We used tennis balls with leather on the outside, stuck them in the bowling machine, which we set at 160kph. Then we sent in our ”students” and fired balls at their heads. All the guys at the Academy would get hit and often came out bleeding. Except Ricky.
He was still hitting those balls in front of square-leg. He was so good that the guys working at the Saca (South Australian Cricket Association) would come out of their offices when Ricky was in the net to watch, and I’m talking about people who know the game, ex-players such as Jamie Siddons and Andrew Zesers.
If I had to make a comparison between Ponting and anyone else in the history of the game, I’d go for Viv Richards, which says something in itself. There are technical similarities with Richards. Ponting gets his front leg down the pitch early and sometimes he plays across it, opening up the leg side. And, like Viv, he hooks and pulls brilliantly, very often off the front foot.
That ”planting” of his front foot down the pitch can be regarded as a technical deficiency. He sometimes falls over to the off-side, but even that can work to his advantage. It means sides will bowl straight to him at the start of his innings in the hope of getting him lbw. That sometimes happens when something is not quite right, but 99% of the time he will soon be cracking those deliveries wide of mid-on.
It wouldn’t surprise me if he kept going for another six or seven years, scoring just as heavily as he is now. His fielding can be a good barometer of his cricket. He’s working really hard at it now; he loves fielding and he puts himself in the key positions, either in the circle or at second slip. As captain he is not interested in hiding himself.
He seems to have galvanised the Australians pretty well. I’m not sure he was born to be captain, but he has grown into it. Sometimes he tries to do too much in the field, always fidgeting around rather than letting the game flow — though he’s not alone in that among Test captains.
And he does not always have a simple task, despite the great players in his team. It can be difficult captaining an ageing side. Most of his charges are heroes in their own rights and have played as many, if not more, games than Ricky. It can’t be easy to get them all pulling together all of the time. That probably didn’t happen in England, which is one reason why Australia lost.