Читать книгу At the Close of Play - Ricky Ponting - Страница 18

I CAME IN AT FIVE. Darren Lehmann, Matthew Hayden, Damien Martyn and Justin Langer batted ahead of me and Tom Moody after. Phil Emery had the wicketkeeping job ahead of Adam Gilchrist. And, you know what the amazing thing was? We weren’t good enough. We were the B team. Well, they called us Australia A that summer, but we were the ones not playing for the Australian side, the one with Taylor, Slater, Warne, McGrath, Boon, Bevan …

It’s remarkable what depth of talent we had in Australian cricket then. There was a bottleneck of players just waiting for their chance, or another chance. I can’t stress too highly how important the opportunity to play in an A side against good opposition was and is. Like most of the players I came through with, I benefited greatly from the chance to test my skills against the top rung.

When Australia A took on Australia in the World Series one-day tournament that also included England and Zimbabwe there was as much, if not more, riding on the outcome of the matches between the home sides as those with the visitors. In footy there is no game played harder than an intra-club match and in cricket it has to be said that this was as close to that as you got.

ONE OF THE CRITICISMS I’ve often heard about one-day international (ODI) cricket is that we play too much of it. A consequence of this over-supply is that too many games are quickly forgotten. There is some fairness in this criticism — mostly, in my view, when there are too many games in a single series or tournament. The seven-game marathons in England in 2009 and against England in Australia in 2010–11 come to mind, or even the 2007 World Cup, which lasted 47 days from opening game to final. I reckon I’m qualified to make observations here as I’ve played more ODIs than any other Australian … there’s no way I can remember them all.

I can tell you, however, I have never forgotten playing those games against the Australian team. It was a great chance for a few of us young bucks to get out there and try to prove ourselves. While there wasn’t an edge to the game in the sense of cricketers from the two teams constantly sledging each other, there were a few words exchanged and the games we played during the summer were extraordinarily competitive. The Australia A team contained a couple of hard-nosed seniors in Merv Hughes and Tom Moody, a few blokes like Martyn, Hayden, Langer and Paul Reiffel who had been in and out of the Test and ODI teams in the previous couple of years, and young blokes like me who were anxious to impress. So there was never any question we’d try and take it up to the blokes on the next level.

In Adelaide we kept them to 202 from their 50 overs. When I came out to join Matt Hayden we were 3–77 and in with a real chance. Time wasn’t really an issue and when our keeper, Phil Emery, and I started building a decent sixth-wicket partnership I really thought we could win. However, Shane Warne came back on to bowl, and I found myself in a real battle. This was a different bowler to the skilful spinner I’d faced in the indoor nets when I was at the Academy — this bloke was turning them just as much but now he was the most competitive bowler I’d ever faced. Every ball felt like an exam, no two deliveries were quite the same, and while Warnie’s chat to me seemed friendly enough a few things he said seemed to stay in my head. What was he thinking when he asked Mark Taylor loudly if he could put a man in at bat-pad? Previously I’d felt we had the run-rate just about under control, but now it seemed to be climbing rapidly and we were under pressure to get things moving. And, when I did middle an attacking shot, there was always a bloody fielder in the road. I’d get to see this relentlessness in Shane’s bowling time and again — the remarkable way he could put the pressure back on the batsmen, so he had the whip hand.

Eventually, having scored 42 from 63 deliveries (which sounds awfully slow by 21st century standards but was actually okay for the mid 1990s), I tried to slog-sweep him out of the ground, but the ball wasn’t quite there and it ballooned out to Michael Bevan on the fence.

The final margin was just six runs in their favour, but we choked in the end, losing our last four wickets for six runs when we’d needed 13 to win from 21 balls in hand. Afterwards, a number of people said nice things about the way I batted, but I was very disappointed. I thought I’d cost us the game.

Four weeks later, the two teams met again in Brisbane, and this time we were chasing 253 to win and Michael Bevan (who’d been dropped from the top Australian team) and I were going all right. Then, totally unexpectedly, David Boon came on to bowl. If Warne was the Ace in the pack in the previous game, this time Mark Taylor was playing his Joker. It was very good captaincy. Now Boonie didn’t really enjoy bowling, he never bowled for Tasmania and in the previous 11 years he had sent down the grand total of 6.4 overs in ODI cricket, and taken exactly no wickets.

I knew he’d come on to bowl for my benefit — they knew how much I idolised Boonie and that I’d probably be too scared to play a shot, for fear of getting out. I figured he’d probably bowl off-breaks, and I think that’s what they were. And jeez they were hard to get away. ‘Don’t you get out, Ponts,’ he kept chirping down the wicket, ‘If you do, I won’t ever let you forget it.’

‘Bowled Boonie,’ chimed in wicketkeeper Ian Healy, as if he was keeping to Warnie or Tim May.

My fellow ‘Swampie’ admitted later that it was he who had conned the captain into giving him a bowl. ‘He’ll be that scared of getting out he might not go for many,’ he’d said. Boonie didn’t get me out, but my fellow Swampie only went for 17 from four overs, at a time when we needed more than that. They’d outsmarted me. Bevo and I both ran ourselves out as we lost our last eight wickets for 52 runs, and we could only rue another opportunity lost. The real casualty, though, was poor Phil Emery. So impressed was Mark Taylor with Boonie’s bowling against me that he used him again in the second of the World Series Cup finals (we’d beaten England once and Zimbabwe twice to finish second on the table after the round-robin games), and this time he bowled five overs for just 13 runs and knocked Phil over with a slow, straight delivery that was somehow inside-edged back onto the stumps. Afterwards, Boonie wouldn’t leave our keeper alone, until eventually Phil had to say, ‘Piss off, will you, I don’t want to hear about it again!’

We lost that best-of-three finals series 2–0, but we ran them mighty close. It came down to the 50th over of their run-chase, and our quick, Greg Rowell, bowled nearly the best last over in the history of the game: five perfect yorkers before a low full toss just outside off-stump was slashed over gully by Heals to win them the game. The second game of the finals series wasn’t as exciting, but they still needed 49 of their 50 overs to get home.

The other thing was we beat England in one of the games. Which just goes to show how much depth there was in our cricket.

I think the Australia A experiment was a fruitful exercise, but having gone on to captain Australia myself I can see why Tubby Taylor didn’t like the concept (and he certainly wasn’t the only one in his team who felt that way). If they won, they were the bad guys, but if they lost, their Test and ODI places were in jeopardy. The guys in the main team told me later they hated getting booed at home and fair enough. Things got heated at times and in one match I remember Matty Hayden and Glenn McGrath going at it before Pidge pushed Matty away. On balance, though, I believe the good outweighed the bad, so if Cricket Australia ever wanted to revive the idea I’d be for it. I didn’t have a very productive tournament, but it was still a chance for me at age 19 to share a dressing room with blokes who’d been there, done that, to showcase my technique on a national stage and to come up against the best in the business in matches that mattered. For guys like Greg Blewett (who came into the Australia A team for our last four games and scored a hundred and two fifties) and Paul Reiffel (who was controversially ‘promoted’ to be Australia’s 12th man for the finals), it offered a springboard into the Australian Test team.

My ‘lucky break’ came three weeks after the one-day finals, when Michael Slater had his thumb fractured by England fast bowler Devon Malcolm in the fifth Ashes Test at the WACA. Australia was scheduled to fly to New Zealand straight after that game for an ODI tournament that would also feature India and South Africa and with Slats injured, a new batsman was needed. Realistically, the selectors could have picked any one of seven or eight players (Stuart Law, Damien Martyn, Justin Langer, Darren Lehmann, Michael Bevan, Matt Hayden, Tom Moody, Shaun Young …) but I was the bat they went for, which for me, the entire Ponting family and it seemed much of Mowbray, was just unbelievable.

I was home in Launceston when the phone call came late on a Thursday. I have to admit there was a celebration that night and a stack of phone conversations the next day, as friends, family, cricket officials and reporters queued up to offer their congratulations. I was also quickly invited to a lunch in the city organised by the Century Club, but was a little embarrassed when I realised that my jeans and collared T-shirt hardly met the dress code of the club where the function took place. Boonie, much more up on these sorts of things, was wearing a jacket and tie. Mind you, if I’d known more formal wear was required I’m not sure what I would have done, because at that point in my life I certainly didn’t own a suit and I’m not sure if I even had a necktie to my name.

With all this activity, it took a little while to sink in that I really was an Australian cricketer. The best chance I had to think about what was happening to me came on the Saturday, when I turned out for Mowbray against Launceston, opened the batting, and was out in the second over for a duck. Those who say cricket is a great leveller know what they’re talking about. On the Sunday, I was at Bellerive, playing for Tassie against WA in a Mercantile Mutual one-dayer, and this time I made it to 10 when we batted. I tried to cover-drive Brendon Julian on the up but hit a catch to Damien Martyn, my Australia A captain, at cover. ‘Take that to New Zealand with you,’ Martyn sneered at me as I began the long walk back to the pavilion.

Twenty-four hours later, I was on the plane to Wellington, wearing a blazer with a very similar crest to the one on the blazer Uncle Greg wore to England in 1989, sitting in the same block of seats as some of the biggest names in Australian cricket. It was a happy time. The guys had just retained the Ashes pretty emphatically and their partners and children had all come along too. Mark Taylor was accompanied not just by his wife Judi and son William, but also their new baby Jack, who was less than two weeks old when he set off on his first overseas trip.

I wasn’t too intimidated by the whole experience. In a way I had been preparing for it all my life and I had already met most of the guys on the plane somewhere in my travels. Initially, I stuck close to the blokes from the Australia A team, such as Grew Blewett and ‘Pistol’ Reiffel, but of course I knew Warnie, Boonie and Glenn McGrath pretty well and a guy I found I had plenty in common with was Mark Waugh, who loves talking racing, particularly harness racing. A day out at the Dunedin Golf Club, when I discovered that Blewey and I (the two youngest guys in the team) had the lowest handicaps, was an off-field highlight, not least for the way the senior guys reacted when Warnie claimed he played off 14. I heard the term ‘burglar’ whispered more than once before we teed off and then shouted by just about everyone after the wonder leggie walked away with all our prizemoney. The vibe through the group was terrific. When I look back on that short tour — indeed, on my first couple of seasons in the Australian set-up — I can’t help but think how lucky I was to start my career as a junior member of a team on the rise.

I played in all four of our games, batting six against South Africa and New Zealand (scoring 1 and then 10 not out) but being promoted to first-drop for the game against India, when I made 62 from 92 deliveries. It wasn’t the most flamboyant dig of my life, but at the time I felt it was one of the most important because I made this half-century in a fair-dinkum one-day international (remember the Australia A games weren’t granted full status) in front of men whose respect I craved. Every time one of them said, ‘Well played,’ I felt even more important. In the final I was back at No. 6 and I walked to the wicket with us needing 17 to win and more than 20 overs available in which to get them. David Boon was at the other end and he challenged me to be with him at the end, two Swampies together. I was 7 not out when we sealed our six-wicket victory, and after the presentation, back in our dressing room, Boonie led us in a triumphal singing of our team anthem, ‘Underneath the Southern Cross’, which only happened after a victory in a Test match or a one-day series. As I looked around the room I saw how much it meant to them — even for a minor tournament like this (though, of course, it was miles from ‘minor’ for me). An amazing rush of pride and humility dashed through me, and, cheesy as it sounds, I really did feel I was the luckiest bloke in the world.

THE REASON FOR MY selection for that New Zealand trip became clear near the end of the tour when the Australian side for the upcoming Test and ODI tour of the West Indies was announced. The final two batting places went to Justin Langer and me, so I had to assume that I’d been given the Kiwi experience as an entrée to the Caribbean main course. I had enjoyed another pretty successful summer with Tasmania, averaging 75 in the Shield and scoring my first double century — an innings of 211 against WA that occupied seven hours and 20 minutes. It was my fifth straight first-class hundred against WA, dating back to the twin hundreds I scored against them at Bellerive in March 1993. I always liked playing against the Western Australians, loved batting on the bouncy Perth pitch, and enjoyed their competitive nature, the way they were always up for the fight. Guys like Damien Martyn and Lang encapsulated this spirit.

Other highlights of 1994–95 for me were an innings of 82 from 86 balls for an ACB Chairman’s XI in the opening game of England’s Ashes tour, played at Lilac Hill in Perth, and my selection in the Australian XI side that played England in Hobart a week before the start of the Ashes series. The critics described the team as a virtual shadow Test team and the fact the game was staged in my home state meant I felt extra nervous during the lead-up. No way could I get to sleep the night before the game, even though I stayed out with quite a few of the guys for a couple of beers. Next morning, I was up early, worked extra hard in warm-ups, and when we batted I got to 71, enjoying a good partnership with Marto.

I went out for a few beers that night, happy that I’d made some runs in what, for me, was a very important audition. Most of the batsmen were out with me, which was the way it worked in those days — if we were going to be fielding the next day, the guys who’d already batted usually went out for a while. Next morning, however, I slept through the alarm (again) and by the time I got to the ground the boys had left our dressing room and were about to start their warm-up on the field. Bob Simpson, the long-time coach of the Australian Test and one-day teams, was working with the Australian XI and he was out there with them. Simmo was a renowned disciplinarian, but after I’d apologised and said it would never happen again and he replied it had better bloody not, there was nothing more said about it … until the warm-up was completed. The boys started to walk off, but the coach stayed where he was. ‘Ricky, you can stay out here with me till the game starts,’ he said.

First up, Simmo had me catching high ball after high ball — he was renowned for hitting balls where you had to sprint as hard as you could for 30, 40 or 50 metres to just get your hands on the catch, and then he’d do it again. And again. That’s what we did until the game started, which wasn’t good for a bloke with a hangover. I was buggered by the end of it. Later in the dressing room, I guess I should have been thinking about how I’d let myself down, but instead I was preoccupied by the thought that I’d been caught out doing what my more experienced team-mates had also been doing, but they’d got to the ground on time, so the coach was none the wiser, or at least more forgiving.

I liked Simmo. He made you work, he could be hard, but in my experience he was always fair. I quickly came to learn that one of his party tricks was to make hungover, late or ill-disciplined players work doubly hard in practice, and that he was testing me out on that second morning of the Australian XI game. Fortunately, I survived every challenge and we got on well after that. At least he couldn’t question my work ethic. In fact, I revelled in his fielding drills, though I never needed anyone to push me with that part of my game. I knew I was a good fielder and catcher, but I was never satisfied. Where this came from, I don’t know — but as with batting and golf, once I realised I was good at it, I kept trying to improve. I remember going to training with Mowbray, Tuesday and Thursday nights, and I fielded all evening. As soon as I’d done my batting, I was running around, catching high balls or ricochets off the slips cradle, taking pride in every aspect of it, trying to be better than everyone else. It was the same when I was at fielding practice with the Tasmanian and Australian teams. I didn’t care how good the best fielders, guys like Mark and Steve Waugh, were, I tried my best to outdo them. That trait stayed with me right up until my last game.

I found Simmo to be a helpful and perceptive coach, who had a very similar philosophy to Rod Marsh when it came to teaching cricket. Neither man set out to massively change the way I batted on the basis that I was obviously doing a few things right to get to the level I had reached. As a result they restricted their advice to fine-tuning my technique.

THAT FIRST AUSTRALIA A game we played in Adelaide happened in late November. A little more than three months later, I was at Sydney airport, walking into business class of a Cathay Pacific 747, finding my seat for the flight to Hong Kong, from where we’d fly to London for a two-day stopover before heading to Barbados. It was genuinely exciting to be in London for the first time, but what I noticed most was how different the mood was on this tour from the atmosphere in New Zealand, when partners and kids were with us, and the week had a ‘holiday’ feel. This time, we were serious.

Yes, there was time to walk around London, but we also spent time under team physio Errol Alcott’s expert supervision in the gym at the Westbury Hotel, watched some videos of the recent West Indies–New Zealand Test series and had a lengthy team meeting chaired by captain Mark Taylor that established the approach he wanted the team to take in the Caribbean. I was struck by how professionally run this gathering was, and how astute and perceptive many of the comments were — from Tubby, Simmo and a number of the senior guys. This was clearly a team with plenty of cricket nous and a tour that meant a great deal to them. I didn’t say anything during the meeting, just listened intently and lapped it all up.

The next morning, we had to be downstairs not long after 6am for the start of the next leg of our journey, and that hour of the morning was not one I usually enjoyed seeing. This time, however, I was the first one ready for the bus.

If I had a choice between two very similar standard players, I would always select the player with the right temperament, make-up and personality. While I was never a national selector, nor would this situation be a regular occurrence, my point is that the character of players is really important to building a successful team. We are always looking for the best talent to come through our system and play for Australia. In the most successful teams that I have been a part of, the talent in the team was outstanding and our performances showed that. We had a team of individuals from which you knew there was always at least one player who would stand up and deliver when the team needed something extra.

Success breeds success, and success also builds teams. But teams that do not achieve consistent success require a completely different approach. Sometimes you can’t build a team around individual brilliance, group dynamics and group leadership. Sometimes you have to pick players with particular character to support the younger, less experienced players or to add value to the leadership group or simply for their experience.

Over the final third of my time in the Australian team, there was a lot of turnover in our teams. As players retired, a new generation of players made their Australian debuts. Many of these never quite became permanent fixtures in the team and played only a few games. This was a challenge for me as captain. Players would come in to debut and we would have a data bank of information on their technique, strengths and weaknesses and other game data to help me and the team get the best out of them. But we lacked the detail on their character and personality. I had to spend as much time as I could with these guys when they first came into the group getting to know them, working out what made them tick and what I needed to be aware of in the game situation. A lot of this was done on the run and wasn’t always a success out on the field.

It’s when the pressure comes on that you really find out about an individual and their capacity to perform at the international level. When you are building a team or preparing for a period of change in a team, more time and care needs to be taken to focus on the character and make-up that will be required to balance the critical need for talent and the ability to perform consistently at the highest level.