Читать книгу At the Close of Play - Ricky Ponting - Страница 19

‘THOSE HANDSHAKE AGREEMENTS between you blokes, where you don’t bounce each other, they don’t exist anymore,’ he said, looking straight at our pace bowlers: Craig McDermott, Glenn McGrath, Damien Fleming and Paul Reiffel. That sounded pretty fair to me, but then I wasn’t one of the late-order batsmen who were about to cop as good as they gave, maybe even worse.

Steve ‘Tugga’ Waugh had a reputation for being a tough and combative cricketer and he demonstrated it here, arguing that it was inevitable that the West Indies quicks were going to fire bumpers at us, so we had to bounce them too. Furthermore, they were going to attack our tail, so we should do the same to them.

As it turned out, Steve would have a famous tour, most notably when he stood up to the fearsome Curtly Ambrose on a dangerous wicket during the third Test at Port-of-Spain, and then followed up with a brave and brilliant double century in the series decider at Kingston.

Tugga was one of our most experienced players — having come into the Australian team as a 21-year-old in late 1985, when the side was losing more often than it won — and many times in the years we played together he would reminisce about those days, emphasising that we should never take winning for granted. In the days leading up to this Test series, he wanted us to know that during the 1980s and into the 1990s the West Indies played cricket bloody hard and to make this point he’d recount stories of fast bowlers like Malcolm Marshall, Patrick Patterson, Courtney Walsh and Ambrose firing bouncer after bouncer at battle-weary Australian batsmen. David Boon, who would play his 100th Test in Port-of-Spain during this tour, recalled how Marshall had whispered to him at the non-striker’s end during his Test debut, ‘Are you going to get out, or am I going to have to kill you?’ Mark Taylor, Craig McDermott, Mark Waugh and Ian Healy had similar stories, so it was hardly surprising that the senior blokes backed Steve’s call to stand up to them this time. We were going to, as old footballers like to say, ‘Retaliate first!’

Part of this process was to have our quicks bowling plenty of short stuff in the nets, as a rehearsal for what they’d be doing in the Tests and to get the batsmen used to the reprisals they’d be copping from the Windies’ quicks. This helped me, I think, because I was never shy about playing the hook and pull shots. I desperately wanted the leadership to believe I deserved to be on the tour, and whenever Tubby or Steve or Bob Simpson complimented me on the way I handled the short deliveries I felt I was on the way to achieving that.

With Greg Blewett established in the Test line-up at No. 6 (he’d scored centuries in each of his first two Tests at the end of the 1994–95 Ashes series), Justin Langer and I realised we were the two ‘extra’ batsmen in the squad. Rather than let this situation get us down, we made a pact in Bridgetown, in the early days of the tour, that however much we enjoyed ourselves off the field, when it was training time we’d work tenaciously hard. It was on this tour that I came to realise how hard I needed to work if I wanted to become a very good international player. Justin and I were able to watch how the accomplished players prepared themselves for games, what routines they kept, even little things like what they did as they waited to bat. No two blokes were exactly alike; what I had to do was watch what they were doing, work out why they were doing it and then decide what was best for me.

As it turned out, I made little impact on the actual field of play, chiefly because I had few opportunities. I appeared in the third and fifth ODIs, one other limited-overs game and one three-day tour game, and in all three of the 50-over games we played in Bermuda at the trip’s end. I knew, going in, that unless there were injuries I was very unlikely to play in a Test, though I would have loved to have made at least one big score.

I was unlucky in one respect, as an agonising bout of food poisoning in St Kitts forced me out of the three-day game against a West Indies Cricket Board XI that was played between the second and third Tests. On the evening before the game, we’d been invited to one of the island’s finest seafood restaurants, but while everyone else went for the lobster or one of the succulent fish dishes, I chose the ‘conch chowder’ and paid the price, spending all night and most of the following day throwing up at regular intervals. My best innings on the tour was the 43 I scored in the ODI at Port-of-Spain; my only half-century came in the last game before we flew home.

I was pretty disappointed about getting sick as there was an outside chance in that tour game I could press my case for a Test place. I had never been on a tour before where you did nothing and it was a steep learning curve. One of the things that is important on a tour is not to have guys weighing down others. When you get picked or are in the team and struggling to make an impact it is important to stay positive. Self-indulgence is something of a crime and there are many blokes who have had their cards marked as bad tourists and possibly missed the chance of being in the squad because they became a liability. Later, when I was captain, one of the things I would tell every new player coming into the squad was that it was the job of the 12th, 13th or 14th man to keep everybody happy and to bring some energy to the group. If you weren’t playing that was your role. Back then David Boon was a great help to me when he saw how upset I was to miss the tour game, telling me to keep my spirits up and to ensure I used the opportunity to learn as much as I could about being part of the squad. I was so fortunate to have him around. He was one of my people, we had played footy for the same club and he was just a typical Launceston bloke. He never had much to say, but when he did it was worth listening to; his humour was dry and devastating. He adopted me in those early days and had a lot of positive things to say about my future. When he released his autobiography Boonie wrote a small piece suggesting I would make more Test runs than him. He had a lot of nice things to say, but couldn’t help sledging me about the fact he and Shaun Young had been driving me around for years and I still didn’t have a licence. Oh, and he couldn’t help but bring up his bowling performance against me that summer. ‘The only thing Ricky Ponting fears on a cricket field is facing my bowling. The thought of losing his wicket to me obviously has him petrified.’ I suppose I had that one coming.

AT THE START OF THE TOUR, most of the boys were still calling me ‘Pont’ or ‘Ponts’ but eventually Warnie got his way and I became Punter, the nickname that will never leave me. I guess my actions on our very first day in the Caribbean might have hastened this evolution, as Mark Waugh and I skipped a fancy lunch so we could get to the races in time for the first. It was Barbados Cup day, an event we believed needed to be savoured in its entirety, so we were on our way to the track as soon as we’d collected our first tour allowance. If we wanted an early introduction to Caribbean culture, this was perfect. There was plenty of calypso, a sea of colour and a strong bouquet of rum that wafted over proceedings. I loved being able to stand back and watch the locals with Tugga and Warnie, who joined us during the afternoon and we were immediately feted like rock stars. I couldn’t help but be impressed by how nice and friendly everyone was to us. When the cricket started, however, the locals proved to be not so friendly. The next morning, we played our opening game and the first ball was a beamer to Michael Slater, which nearly decapitated him, and the third was a vicious riser that ballooned off his glove to first slip.

The short stuff would continue throughout the Test series, but just as the boys had promised they stood up to every single bumper, while our pace attack, spearheaded by Glenn McGrath, gave at least as good as we received. The way Pigeon took them on was magnificent and the positive body language of all the boys was so impressive — it seemed to intimidate the West Indies players, which was almost stunning given the manner in which they’d steamrollered all challengers over the previous 15 years or more. When we won the Frank Worrell Trophy in Jamaica our dressing room was filled with TV cameras and reporters and they were allowed to stay to do their interviews while the room was doused in beer and champagne and some of the worst renditions of Cold Chisel’s ‘Khe Sanh’ ever heard were telecast via satellite back to Australia. Eventually, though, everyone except those in or very close to the team were asked to leave, we formed a tight circle, and Boonie led us in a rendition of our anthem that literally had the hairs on the back of my neck standing to attention. Even though I didn’t play in the series I still felt part of it all. In the years that followed, there would be some rousing renditions of ‘Underneath the Southern Cross’— I’d even get to lead the team in a few — but I’m not sure any had the raw emotion of this one.

That night, we ended up at a hotel next door to the one where we were staying, but most of the guys stayed in their whites and along with a few past players — Allan Border, Dean Jones, Geoff Lawson and David Hookes — who had been savaged by the West Indies in the past, we sat on deck chairs, glasses never empty, and talked about how good it was to win. I hardly said a word, just took it all in. In the years that followed, all the senior guys on this tour would talk about how their memories of the losses they suffered in the 1980s and early 1990s acted as a spur to keep going when the team started winning consistently; how it taught them to be relentless. Coming later as I did, I never experienced those painful setbacks, but I saw how much winning in the Windies in 1995 meant to the older guys. It was a lesson I never forgot.

THE TWO MONTHS WAS an education for me in other ways, too. Rooming with Steve Waugh, for example, meant I could grill him on how he approached Test cricket. Tugga was a cricketer who had thought deeply about the mental challenges of batting against giants like Ambrose and Walsh, and he was also happy to talk about his struggles at the start of his international career, like how he coped with not scoring his first Test hundred until his 27th Test. It wasn’t that he was trying to scare me; more that he wanted to stress that success wasn’t going to come easily. If I persisted, he explained, I was a chance for a long career.

After Steve, I ‘bunked’ with Tim May, which was a completely different assignment. Maysie was not in the Test XI and had made the assessment that with the team going well that situation was unlikely to change, so he set out to enjoy the tour as much as possible. What was most remarkable was his rare ability to turn up at breakfast seemingly as bright as a button despite the fact he’d been out until sunrise. He knew there were boundaries and he never crossed them, and rather than get people into trouble his natural instinct was to make sure everyone was sweet. When I said at midnight I’d had enough for the night, Maysie never talked me into kicking on (which, more than once, he easily could have), because he was always in my corner. He is also a born comedian, and remarkably astute at mimicking people and exposing their foibles, which meant that sharing a room with him was a laugh a minute.

As well as a couple of days at the races, the odd spot of deep-sea fishing and a few rounds of golf (especially in Bermuda), there were numerous activities organised by the team’s social committee. These ranged from team dinners to beach volleyball to, at the start of the tour, a facial hair–growing competition, where we were given a specific assignment — handle-bar moustache, bushy sideburns and so on — with prizes to be awarded to the best achievers. I was assigned a goatee beard. Apparently, this competition had been a bit of a hit on the Pakistan tour in 1994. This time, however, the guys quickly lost interest, but I kept at it, mainly because I copped such a ribbing during my slow early progress that I was determined to see the thing through. In the end the goatee stayed with me for the best part of the next two years.

In Guyana, where we played the final one-day international of the tour and the first of two first-class games before the first Test, I got my ear pierced, which seemed like a good idea at the time. Dad had always told me if I came home with an earring he’d rip it straight out, and to this day I wonder why he didn’t. Maybe the fact Boonie got his ear done at the same time had something to do with it, but it didn’t last too long. Another way I confirmed my novice status on this tour came after we were told not to stay on the phone if we called loved ones in Australia. I made a couple of calls home to Mum, kept talking, and was horrified to discover when we checked out of the hotel that I was hundreds of dollars out of pocket.

When we arrived in Bermuda at the tour’s end, the boys were ready to party. We hadn’t been at our flash resort for long and I was down at the bar with a trio of seasoned campaigners — Boonie, Tubby and Errol Alcott — and after a couple of ales someone proposed we check the island out on the mopeds that were available for guests to use. We didn’t get far before we lost Boonie. First, we decided to give him a chance to catch up, but when he didn’t reappear we figured we should go back and look for him, and when we couldn’t find him we assumed he’d returned to the bar. That seemed like a good idea so back we went. But he wasn’t there either. What to do? We ordered a beer, having decided that if he didn’t return by the time the drinks were finished we’d organise a search party, and it had reached the stage where that’s what we were going to do when our hero finally emerged with blood seeping from cuts to his legs, arm and chin and an unlit cigarette perched precariously on his bottom lip.

It was one of those situations where everyone wanted to ask, ‘What happened to you?’ But everyone was waiting for everyone else to ask that obvious question. Then, before anyone said anything, Boonie quietly deadpanned, ‘Anyone got a light?’

He’d been riding at the back of our pack when he failed to take a turn at high speed and he and bike parted company.

Perhaps his mishap should have been a warning, but there was no holding back when a larger group of us went out that night for some more exploring. This time, Ian Healy stalled his moped and I volunteered, because of the basic mechanics Dad had taught me, to get it restarted, saying, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll catch you all up.’ I was able to do that, but then the bludger conked out again on the way back to the hotel and as I tried to get it going the back wheel got caught in a gutter. My response — part bravado, part frustration, part eagerness to return to the pack — was to go full-throttle, and when the bike did free itself it took off on me straight into a pole on the opposite side of the road. I’m not quite sure how I survived, but the bike was a write-off.

This wasn’t the only time a moped took a battering while we were in Bermuda. Right at the start, we had to get a permit before we could ride the things, which involved a basic test in the resort car park. A number of the guys had their partners with them for this final leg of the tour — until then, it had been boys only — and the girls had queued up so they could ride around the island too. All each of us had to do was go in a straight line, ride around a tree situated on the edge of the bitumen, and then come back, dodging a couple of witches’ hats along the way. I passed the course easily, we all did, except for one of the girls who had no idea how to ride a bike and when she was supposed to slow and turn instead she panicked and accelerated straight up a steep rise behind the tree. Near the top of the rise, the bike flipped back over itself while she kept hanging on, and for a moment it looked like things might turn really messy. Fortunately — and a bit miraculously — she survived, but then, when she picked up the bike, the back wheel was still spinning and as soon as it hit the ground it took off again. The two of them — bike and terrified rider — shot straight across the car park and it was a miracle (again) that she was finally able to get the thing to stop. Despite all this, she was then given a pass and soon we were on our way.

STRICTLY SPEAKING, I SHOULDN’T have been given a permit, because when we were making our applications we were required to fill out a form, and one of the questions was: Do you have a driver’s licence? The correct answer — if I wanted a permit — was ‘yes’, so I had to lie.

I could have got my driver’s licence any time after I turned 17, but I never felt like I needed one, at least not until I was well into my 20s. From the time I first went to the Academy when I was 15 I was never really in one place for any length of time, so getting an opportunity to do the lessons was tricky. And when I was back in Launceston, there was usually someone able to give me a lift and more often than not at other times I could get to where I needed to go without too much of a hassle. It’s not that big a town. Most of the time I was going no further than the golf course, the cricket ground, the footy or the dogs, and I was rarely going to any of those places on my own.

I certainly wasn’t scared of driving, more just lazy, I guess. If I’d found myself constantly marooned at home unable to get to places I needed to go, I’m sure I would have got my licence in record time, but the blokes I spent my time with were all happy to pick me up or Mum or Dad were usually there if I needed a lift. And if you arrived at the club on time there was a bus to take you to the away games. Ironically, one of my first sponsors was Launceston Motors, the city’s biggest Holden dealership, and they offered me a car as part of the deal. (Perhaps my favourite sponsorship from those early days was with a local bakery. I didn’t get anything out of it; instead the funds were used to renovate the clubhouse at Invermay Park.)

When I was 24 I bought a house in Norwood, a suburb in South Launceston, which I shared with my then girlfriend. It was after we broke up early in the 1999–2000 season — and I found myself living in the house on my own — that I finally felt the need to get my L plates.

I suppose I can tell the story of finally getting my licence now. There was a policeman in a small town about three hours’ drive from Launceston on the north-west coast who may not have been the strictest when it came to those sorts of things. I don’t know how I heard of him, but Mum drove me up there and I basically went for a little drive with him and before I knew it I was a registered driver. If Boonie ever needed a lift all he had to do was call.

SIX WEEKS AFTER WE returned home from the West Indies in 1995, I was in England as a member of a ‘Young Australia’ team that was captained by Stuart Law. With hindsight, it’s easy to say that this was a classy outfit — of the 14 guys in the squad, four had already played Test cricket (Jo Angel, Justin Langer, Matthew Hayden and Peter McIntyre) and eight more of us would before our careers were over (Stuart Law, Matthew Elliott, Michael Kasprowicz, Shaun Young, Adam Gilchrist, Martin Love, Brad Williams and me). The only blokes who didn’t go on to win a baggy green cap were the South Australian pacemen Shane George and Mark Harrity, but if you’d told me at the time that they would be the two to miss out, I wouldn’t have believed you. They were two excellent quicks.

We were reminded in our first team meeting that an Ashes series would be played in the UK in 1997, so the guys who did well in English conditions on this trip might gain some inside running. To be honest, though, while some blokes might have been planning that far ahead, I think for batsmen like Haydos and Lang, who’d experienced Test cricket, and myself and Stuart Law, who had played ODI cricket in the previous 12 months, we were hoping to crack the top side before the middle of 1997. The problem was, given that the Frank Worrell Trophy was now in the Australian Cricket Board’s trophy cabinet, there didn’t seem to be an opening. All we could do was make a case to be next in line, and that process began with this tour.

In this regard, I didn’t do myself any harm, going past 50 five times in 12 first-class innings, but the other blokes had a good time of it as well, so I never felt as if I was standing out. A highlight for me came at Worcester, when I scored 103 not out against an attack that included the former Test bowler Neal Radford, but the enormity of the task I faced to make the Test side was underlined in our one-dayer against Surrey at the Oval, when I thought I batted really well to score 71 from 87 balls. Trouble was, at the other end Stuart Law was in sensational form, smashing 163 from just 126 deliveries and in the process making everyone forget I was even out there. There were numerous examples of this happening, where one guy would play really well but another would do something even better. Against Somerset, for example, Shaun Young made an excellent hundred, but Adam Gilchrist hit 122 from 102 balls, reaching his ton with a colossal six. The competitiveness among us would serve us and Australian cricket well for the following decade.

The only downer of the tour for me was that in the six weeks I was in England I never once had the chance to get to a dog track or a racecourse. Sure, I got to see iconic tourist attractions like Buckingham Palace and the Houses of Parliament, and to play at famous grounds like the Oval, Headingley and Edgbaston, but a number of blokes back in Launceston had told me how different and interesting horse and greyhound racing can be in Britain and I wanted to experience it for myself. All I could do, as I tried to find some sleep on the long flight home, was to make a commitment to do all I could to get back to England in the near future, preferably with the blokes I’d been with in the Caribbean, this time as a member of an Australian Ashes touring team.

Practice makes perfect is one of those everyday coaching lines that you hear all the time. But for me it goes one step further than that — perfect practice makes perfect! You have to train as specifically as you can for what you require and do it at an intensity that is as close as possible to match conditions.

For me, cricket has a long way to go to replicate this specific training. We train away from the centre wicket and outfields — on surfaces that are nothing like what we play on during a match. As a batsman preparing in the nets, you are at the end of a wicket that is almost certainly nothing like the centre wicket for the game. You face four or five bowlers — all of different paces and techniques — bowling in an order one after the other with different balls. Again, nothing like what happens in a game, when you face the same bowler with the same ball — for six balls in a row. Bowlers are faced with similar challenges. Many of them are unable to train with their full run-ups, with a full set of different balls to replicate different times in a game, no field placements to bowl to, and most bowlers are limited to the number of balls they will bowl in training to protect their capacity for a game.

I had a saying ‘train hard and play easy’ that summed up the need for more specific training. I think this was one of the reasons we weren’t at our best in the 2005 Ashes series, where we lacked the specific training we required. We certainly fixed that for the 2006–07 Ashes series, where I demanded that Brett Lee, Glenn McGrath and Jason Gillespie bowl new balls at full pace at me in the nets, day in and day out. The bouncers, movement and sheer intensity of those training sessions helped us all and was a part of the foundation for our 5–0 whitewash of England in that series.

Fielding practice has certainly come a long way since my early days in cricket and it’s as specific today as ever. Most days you now get on the outfield of the ground you are playing on. You can replicate a whole range of typical game situations from catching to runs-outs and throws. I had a set routine as part of my one-day training, where I had someone hit balls to me at backward point or extra cover, and I would field the ball and get it into the stumps as quickly as possible. I also had a variation of this where I would attempt to throw down the stumps at either end of the ground. I did tens of thousands of repetitions of this, at high intensity, and it certainly was perfect practice that made perfect.