Tag Archives: michael clarke

Ricky Ponting Should Have Quit While He Was Ahead

Posted on by

Going by Australia’s performances in this World Cup, they didn’t look like the marauding gang of 2003 and 2007, nor like the exciting die-harders of 1999. If they had gone to win this World Cup, it would have been injustice. Well, consider justice served. The World Cup will finally have a new name after a decade of Australian dominance. Which brings me to a hypothetical about Ricky Ponting.

What if Ponting had retired after the 2007 World Cup? Today, he would be remembered thus:

  • Lead Australia to two impeccable World Cup victories and was part of another winning team (1999) and a losing finalist (1996)
  • Lost only 3 Tests: a dead rubber against India in Mumbai and two in the close 2005 Ashes series (both tight losses – 2 runs and 3 wickets).
  • Captain of Australia when they destroyed almost every opponent in Tests, including South Africa (2-0 and 3-0 home and away). Was part of the only Australian team to win in India in recent times (only captained the last Test)
  • Lots and lots of runs in both forms of the game, with some great knocks like the huge century in the 2003 final.
  • Batting statistics compared very favorably with Tendulkar and, at one point, it was plausible that Ponting could have overtaken him in total runs and centuries.

Now, as he goes off into the sunset, here is his record

  • Lost the Ashes three times (twice away, once at home), including the only time ever when a team has lost three matches by an innings.
  • Lost in India twice.
  • Lost at home to South Africa.
  • Gave away a match to Pakistan.
  • Never did anything much with the Twenty20 World Cup.
  • Saw Tendulkar pull away in the Test records quickly and beyond reach, while his own record slumped to “great, but mortal” status.

Full disclosure: I don’t really like Ponting that much – in fact, I don’t like him at all. So this is all good. Ponting owed a lot of his success to having a team of greats (Warne, McGrath, Gilchrist), and if he had quit earlier, he would have had an undeserved legacy. As it happened, he was exposed after the retirements of the senior players. Now, he will be remembered, but not too fondly.

I suspect that Australia will have to go through at least a couple of captains before they start climbing back to the top. There is a sense that Australia’s code has been cracked and i don’t think Michael Clarke can turn that around. None of the other existing players look like captaincy material at this point, so we will have to wait a while.

Sydney Breaks Cricketing Hearts Again

Posted on by

I remember staying awake till the wee hours of January 6th, 2008 to see if India would save the second Test against Australia. It was looking very optimistic with just two overs to go until a sensational over by Michael Clarke blew away the remaining three India wickets while the Indian captain Anil Kumble, with a fighting 45, stood helplessly at the other side. I was heartbroken, dejected and, to some extent, disgusted that the last two batsmen could not manage to preserve their wickets for 11 more balls.

Almost to the day, again in the penultimate over of the day, Australia took the last wicket, this time of the captain himself. Graeme Smith came out to bat with a broken hand and survived 26 minutes, but was not able to withstand the final effort by the Australians. Perhaps if Ntini had taken a single off the previous over instead of hitting those boundaries. Perhaps if Johnson’s ball had not hit the crack in the pitch. These close matches create a lot of “what-if” scenarios in your mind.

The closeness of this Sydney Test brings brought back some of the ugly memories of last year’s Test, but of course, this Test was a more, shall we say, conventional one. Australia dominated the match throughout and South Africa were always trying to make a fight of it. India felt that they had been robbed because of some horrible umpiring decisions and because for some parts of the game, they were ascendant, having made a huge 1st innings courtesy Sachin’s 154.

That Test marked the start of Australia’s terrible year (in relative terms, of course). They lost the return series in India 2-0, lost the current series against South Africa and even let the West Indies off with one draw in a series. Will this be a turnaround year for Australia? Their new attack will have to come good in South Africa and their batting order has to click in tandem. It does like the end of the line for Hayden, but we have been saying that for sometime now and he refuses to leave and the Board refuses to kick him out. We will see.