The man without scriptwriters

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Do you think the ‘iconic’ Ricky Ponting moments will be the swear-shouting at Duncan Fletcher during the 2005 Ashes and the ARROGANT PONTING MUST BE SACKED headline on the 2007-2008 India tour?

Steve Waugh had that last-ball century at the SCG, and Shane Warne was so blessed from a dramaturgical point of view, had so many ‘defining’ moments, even without the off-field play, that they defined his character – Hollywood, the Human Headline. But I worry that Ricky rather got the rough end of the narrative stick. He has been plunged willy-nilly into a great deal of drama, and been an astonishing performer, but he has possibly not made as much good theatre as he deserved on the field. It’s been said – I’m sure I’ve mentioned this – that Ricky’s captaincy lacked a sense of timing. Is that Ricky’s story? His lack of story?

I stand to be corrected. As of writing, I’ve deliberately avoided any research to refresh my memory. The pugnacious teenage prodigy is a good story, and even if I’m wrong about the above, I reckon “pugnacious” will still end up the dominant motif here. Ahem, Bourbon and Beefsteak. When people described Ponting this week as the most “competitive” of players, a real “competitor”, they mean “scrappy”. He gets into the truant schoolboy story book, no problem, “eternally scruffy and frowning” like William. I remember him blowing a kiss to his new wife when he made a triple century. That wasn't a bad moment, I asked a newsagent for their newspaper poster with the photo.

I also remember him just missing a double century in Hobart some time and just missing a series win in India. He saw out the Steve Waugh era and has seen in what I guess will be the Michael Clarke era. I know everyone has to come after someone and before someone else, but hasn’t he had to tie up more dag ends than most? It's telling that the big significance of Ricky going for me is that it's end of the Steve Waugh era, the last player on the national team who had played under Waugh.

If Michael Clarke suffers from his excessive good looks, I don’t think it is accidental that Ricky came to be tarred with the “ugly Australian” brush. I’ll always believe that people thought a little worse of Ricky during the 2005 Ashes because he didn’t look like Andrew Flintoff, and gave Anil Kumble way too much benefit of the doubt on that 2007-2008 India tour just for looking like Anil Kumble.*

Some people would say the “ugly Australian” era began with Steve Waugh, in both senses, but I think Waugh was redeemed in the public imagination by all that Hey True Blue and poetry in the dressing room stuff (“Clancy of the Overthrow”). Steve Waugh was an unemotional player, but in that respect a sentimental bloke. Ricky could be a hothead on the field, but was also unsentimental. Sometimes his eyes would flash black for a moment and you’d see the hot and unsentimental together. I don’t think I fully believed the lack of sentiment until I saw the bit of the retirement press conference when he said that not going to the Ashes was easy because he wasn’t good enough. It took me back to when he was asked whether Warnie had been naïve to take the diuretic, and he answered, “And stupid."

I'll be going through the clippings in the Useful Box this week to see what comes up that I've forgotten. More dag ends, more scraps. None of this is a criticism: I like a bit of a mess and I like a bit of a fight. The dominant motif after all is not "pugnacious", but "scrappy".

* That Bollyline affair made me so angry I wrote a letter to the Herald that wasn’t published (bit of a theme developing here), probably because it contained the following impossible sentence: “As a thirty-something woman who came to cricket late in life, what leaves the sourest taste in my mouth about this sport is the constant invocation of a ‘gentlemanly’ code of conduct which, when deciphered, seems to mean pretty much what it always has, namely an absolute horror of “fuss”, whether positive or negative, and a rather casual attitude towards racism.”