Ricky Ponting and The Meaning Of Life

Ricky Ponting, the former Australian captain, made an intriguing comment on Mark Howard’s podcast The Howie Games. Ponting is the coach of Washington Freedom in the Major League Cricket competition, which has attracted a lot of leading players especially from Australia. Howard asked Ponting about the future of the game in the US. Ponting said he thought the future was very bright but that it was important that the game was not marketed as “cricket”. It had to be marketed as T20.

As Ponting went on to acknowledge, he was simply recognising an undeniable fact, namely that cricket, in its purest form, is something that most people – including, but, as we lawyers say, not limited to, the entire population of the United States – find incredibly boring. My favourite story of a foreigner being introduced to cricket concerns Groucho Marx, who attended a match at Lord’s as a guest. After dutifully watching for half an hour or so, the great comic turned to his host and asked “ When do they start?”

It is nobody’s fault that cricket is commonly regarded as almost numbingly tedious. It is certainly not the fault of Test cricket or the people, men and women, who play it. Test cricket is more entertaining than ever. And its imminent demise has been predicted for generations. One can safely predict that The Ashes will be a sellout for at least another decade or two, as long as the Big Three do not carry out their threat to increase the frequency. But who is finding it entertaining? Probably the same people who found it entertaining twenty years ago and, with luck some of their more tolerant children. India may be another story, but there T20 really is king. Actually people across the globe still find it interesting but few have the time or inclination still to watch it. Franchise cricket is different. You can have a great time, see lots of sixes, with fun for all the family – as long as there’s not too much alcohol – all in three hours. Ponting made this point very well: he thought a night at a T20 game would be at least as entertaining for a family as, probably, a longer evening at the baseball. When the Hundred was introduced, one justification was that it would introduce a new audience who would gravitate towards “proper” cricket. Now that The Hundred has effectively become a privately owned franchise the original goal is much clearer. Admittedly the county game has been saved, at least until the inevitable next cash crunch. But the next change to the Hundred will be, what..? – the Fifty? Can attention spans in the TikTok generation last that long? Ponting is as aware of these issues as anyone.

I don’t normally listen to Howie’s Games. I’ve got nothing against it. It seems good, but there are only 24 hours in a day. I was listening to this because I had read somewhere that Ponting had made a striking comment on it about the South African all-rounder Jacques Kallis.

I am a big fan of Ponting. He was a “lucky “ player for me; he always seemed to get runs when I was watching: I saw him make Test centuries at Adelaide and Brisbane. He was one of the outstanding batters of his generation, an all-time great, to use that care-worn phrase. Only Sachin Tendulkar has scored more than his 13,000-plus Test match runs and; in 2007 his average was just shy of 59, bordering on the exceptional. It dropped as his career went on.

It is fair to say that Ponting was not an exceptional captain, at least not in a good way. He has the unique record, in modern times (post-World War One) of losing three Ashes series, two away and one at home. Even Joe Root did better than that. He was also unique, among MCC and England captains, in having the privilege, or, as it turned out, the misfortune, of leading his side twice Down Under, being thrashed each time. But he never lost at home. Australia stay loyal to their best captains. Bill Woodfull, Don Bradman and Ian Chappell all toured England twice as captain and won both their series; Allan Border did it three times losing the first but triumphing in the other two: he of course also lost a series at home. Australia rarely depart from the mantra that the captain should be the best player: hence Ponting’s longevity in the role.

“Punter” is now a highly respected pundit and a much sought after coach whose views are always respected.

Still, even Homer nodded, as they say. Howard asked Ponting who were the best three bowlers he faced (Wasim Akram, Curtly Ambrose, Dale Steyn, as fast bowlers, plus Harbhajan Singh, Anil Kumble and Muttiah Muralitharan, with an honourable mention for Mohammed Asif). He then asked him who were the three best batters that he “looked at and thought “Wow!””. Ponting responded with Brian Lara and Tendulkar.  He then said this: “Jacques Kallis is the best cricketer that’s ever played. I don’t care. I don’t care about all the others. Full stop.”

Of course this was said in a chatty podcast; it somehow seems different when, as it were, confirmed in writing. Howard’s question was very clear: he was not asking who was the best ever. But Ponting’s response was very emphatic. In his opinion Kallis was the greatest of all time. (I heard Steve Harmison make the same point on another podcast recently.)

He went on to mention a number of things to back up this assertion. Kallis’ statistics are phenomenal: 13,000 runs in 164 Tests, just below Ponting, an average of 55, 45 hundreds, five below Tendulkar, four above Ponting, and 291 wickets at 32 as a fast-medium bowler this was the point Ponting was keen to emphasise – Kallis was, as it were, two great players, unlike “all the others”, if the others were simply Lara and Tendulkar. Ponting also mentioned Kallis’ brilliant slip fielding; his 196 catches, four more than Ponting himself, putting Kallis fifth in the all-time list. Ponting doesn’t mention this but Kallis, perhaps rather surprisingly, is also sixth in the list of all-time Test six hitters.

Ponting has been consistent in his admiration of the South African all-rounder. A few years ago he selected his all-time world eleven; Kallis was picked to bat at number three in a team which included five Australians and nobody who made their Test debut before Wasim Akram in 1985.

One can understand why Ponting has such a high regard for Kallis. They are almost exact contemporaries. Each made his Test debut – not against the other – in December 1995. Kallis retired in December 2012, and Ponting in December 2013. Ponting played in 29 Tests against South Africa, Kallis in 26 against Australia. That is a lot of top class sport in which to be competing against one another.

Ponting made another point that was very pertinent, namely that Kallis was an underrated cricketer. I think that was always the case, even when he was playing.  There often seemed to be quiet grumbles about him; too negative with the bat – except when hitting sixes, presumably – often reluctant to bowl. He was, naturally, chosen as one of Wisden’s Five Cricketers Of The Year, but it was in 2013, the year he retired, eight years after Ponting and four after his great friend and compatriot Mark Boucher.

Ponting calls him one of the forgotten ones. Fair enough, but in calling him the best ever, was Ponting over-compensating?

I suppose it is refreshing to find an Australian who doesn’t think that Bradman was “the best cricketer that’s ever played”. The fact is, though, that many people would assert that Bradman was not simply the greatest cricketer, but the greatest sportsman that ever played. This is because of the unique superiority of Bradman’s statistics. Often – almost invariably in fact – one cannot compare sportsmen from different eras. With Bradman one feels one can because his numbers were almost literally off the scale, and although the game has changed it has not changed to the extent that Bradman’s game would be significantly diminished.

Someone – I can’t remember who – once said “Every day somebody, somewhere is talking about Don Bradman”. Of course celebrity is a different sort of thing nowadays but Bradman was an exceptionally famous person because of this particular thing he did uniquely well, batting. He is not talked about so much now, but all genuine cricket people will know something about him.

Bradman didn’t bowl but Kallis is hardly the first cricketer to be, as it were, two players in one. For a period of about five years in the 1980s Imran Khan averaged fifty with the bat and nineteen with the ball. But the obvious all-rounder to compare with Kallis is the great West Indian left-hander Garry Sobers: 8,032 runs in 93 Tests, averaging just short of 58, 235 wickets at 34, 109 catches. His highest score was a then world record score of 365 not out. Leading his West Indies side to a three-one win in England in 1966, Sobers scored 722 runs at 103 and took 20 wickets at 27.

It’s not all about numbers. Sobers was the all-rounder par excellence. He took most of his wickets as a left-arm fast medium bowler, but he started his career as a left arm finger spinner who could also bowl wrist spin.

This wasn’t all. In fact none of this is the point really. There was something about Sobers that was very special. You could see it when he simply walked out on to the field, as when walking out to bat. People say the same thing about Vivian Richards but these two astonishing cricketers were very different. Sobers didn’t swagger, but he announced his presence in an unmistakably physical way. I saw him play a bit because he was a regular for Nottinghamshire for many years. And I was lucky enough to see his last Test century, at Lord’s in 1973, before Ricky Ponting was born.

There was a magic about Sobers’ cricket and you always felt he was enjoying it. I am sure Kallis loved his career with South Africa, but that was not necessarily evident. Magic is not a word you associate with him. No doubt he did well enough out of the game and he is young enough to have played some franchise cricket. All that was well before Sobers’ time. It must be urban legend that he periodically wins the Barbados national lottery; he was a notoriously unsuccessful gambler.

Now, of course like everything else cricket is all about money. Well, plus ca change. W.G. Grace, The Great Cricketer, an amateur in theory, made a fortune out of the game. But it’s never been just about money. As with many things in life it is important to remember and respect the past. Bradman and Sobers will never be forgotten.