Short Pitch: Lessons from World Series Cricket

The following excerpt is taken from page 81 of Gideon Haigh's wonderful book The Cricket War, and describes the Australian tour to England in 1977.

Generational problems in the team had been some time coming... nine players [in the back row of the team photograph] had a combined eighteen Tests between them.  Among the team's nominal seniors ... only the captain and vice-captain Chappell and Marsh were genuinely risk-averse selections: Walters had never succeeded in England, McCosker's jaw might not have healed, Thomson was a medical miracle, and none of Walker, O'Keeffe or Davis had been first-choice players a year earlier.  Premature Australian retirements in the preceding two years had divided the team before Packer's intercession.  As Ian Davis remembers: "There was literally no middle age in that side.  You had me and Hooksey, and Serj and Kim Hughes in our early twenties, and then all these other guys round thirty.  Unless you were a very strong personality, you were just in awe of them". 

A page later, Haigh continues regarding Greg Chappell's captaincy:

The captain pined for the do-it-yourself ethos of his brother's time: cricketers who didn't need to be told ... As his virtuoso skill proved insufficient to inspire, Chappell withdrew.  The senior players closed ranks around him, instinctively protective but inadvertently widening their distance from the ranks.  Everyone felt aggrieved, nobody felt responsible, individual isolation was universal.

Sound familiar?

It's fair to say that in the dozen years following the Centenary Test, Australian cricket struggled to reclaim anywhere near its best form.  The hard-bitten culture instilled by Chappell or Allan Border has been minimised by subsequent captains who - while the logical or best choice - didn't have either the same horses to choose from, nor the psychological skills to maximise their performance.

A case in point - would any Australian dare disappoint Chappell or Border?  Recently, we saw players "try" their captain and face the ramifications.  With the most effective Australian captains of old, expectations were communicated through personal relationship, rather than rules.  It is within this environment that players like Lillee, Thomson, Warne and McGrath flourished and under which Australians traditionally perform best.

Australian cricket took a decade to recover from such a fractured dressing room.  Similar stories abound of the 1989 Englishmen and the post-Richards West Indians; one wonders whether it will take Cricket Australia another decade to understand the value of powerful and incisive leadership - on and off the field.

The Next Great Challenge

Ricky Ponting has resigned as Australian captain. And it could be the best decision he's ever made.

Though his abilities with the wand are waning, Ponting still remains Australia's best batsman against the spinning ball and could provide a useful resource for his probable successor Michael Clarke. The decision to resign but not retire ranks with his most mature choices as a leader and is also in keeping with his "lead by example" philosophy.

In Australia it is unusual to abdicate the captaincy. Kim Hughes did so under extremely stressful circumstances, the target of a West Indies pace quartet in their pomp. He also promptly lost his place in the side. Since the war, only Ian Chappell maintained his position in the side after relinquishing the reins. Chappell, like Ponting, had the forceful personality that Hughes lacked and was perhaps still the nation's second-best bat. Ponting still has a role to play, but his time at the top had come to an end and it's refreshing to see such a hard nut accept the circumstances and bow out relatively gracefully.

There is much to like about an Australian side with Ponting not at the helm but still involved. Australia has chosen consciously focused on blooding new talent over the past four years. The bowling ranks have shown the most potential for regrowth with players like Trent Copeland, James Pattinson and Michael Beer leading the way. Cycling Australia's attack may blood youngsters with a minimum of pressure at the expense of some penetration and arguably, the nation has the fast men to back up this rotation.

It is not so with their batting. The 1960s and 1970s in Australia produced the best concentrated burst of batsmanship in history. The 1980s and 1990s seem far less promising - Callum Ferguson remains an inconsistent proposition, Phil Hughes has the eye of a magician but the technique of a lumberjack and Usman Khawaja, potential and all, is likely to score a lot of very pretty thirties. And as proved throughout the recent subcontinental World Cup, Australia struggles against quality spin bowling - or any deviating ball.

The two greatest criticisms of Ponting as Captain included his only-adequate tactical acumen and his temperament. These downfalls mean he may not necessarily make the best head coach, but because of his unquestioned abilities to inspire and teach, he may become Justin Langer's successor as Australia's batting coach. Never the erudite diplomat like Steve Waugh or Mark Taylor - or even as insightful like Allan Border - Ponting's continued future in cricket should be as a specialist coach. It behoves Cricket Australia to begin this transition now - tell him outright the last days of Ricky Ponting are to mentor Khawaja, Hughes, Ferguson and Mitch Marsh without the crippling pressure of running a team.

The Ponting full of the love of the game has been hard to spot for years now as he's been weighed down with expectations, trying to drag a fading team back into relevance. His greatest leadership contribution may not be the 5-0 whitewash of England or his masterful 2003 World Cup Final century. It could - should? - be marked improvement in the fortunes of the next generation.

Ponting Punted?

Perhaps it all came about as a result of his run-in with Steve Smith. Maybe three Ashes defeats from four have finally taken their toll. It could be that his recent form - stunningly unresembling his best - may have marked his cards. But the Sydney Morning Herald has reported that Ricky Ponting's captaincy career could be in for its most stern boardroom test when the team returns from their World Cup campaign. The current tour could be his last as Australian captain.

It's fair that Ponting's reign is thrown into question both for his recent results and on-field attitude. His ascension to the captaincy seemed a case of "right place, right time": he was the standout candidate of a middling field when selectors last deemed generational change necessary. For the first time since Ian Johnson's departure, Australia lacks a clear successor. Of course the plan was for Michael Clarke to follow in his footsteps as the best choice available, but his performances in late 2010 and charisma (that of a moose) haven't endeared him to either public or selectors. In the SMH article which brought this issue to light it is suggested his stock has recovered somewhat.

There's nothing wrong with change for its own sake. Indeed given the recent re-emergence of his always-prominent petulant streak, it could be his teammates support him because of what he was, rather than what he now is. This is an admirable position and his achievements as batsman and leader demand that acknowledgement, but the stance is quite possibly flawed. It's eminently possible that Ricky Ponting is no longer the best man to lead Australia; it may even be that he's only kept the position recently due to a dearth of suitable successors.

What Ponting must remember is that stepping aside now would not be a sign of weakness, nor a commentary on his his success as captain. Context in sport, in life, is all-important. He was charged with the difficult task of maintaining supremacy with a deteriorating team; his record reflects the challenges he has faced. He started his reign as one of a half-dozen World Class players in the Australian team and ended it the only one. In twenty years, we will not look back and say "Ricky Ponting lost the Ashes three times", though it will be true. We will say he did a good - but not outstanding - job in trying circumstances and wanted to better his record right up until the end.

He's always been honest and open, yet it could be that his tenure should end for no other reason than it's just time to go. After leading his country for nine years in the most high-stress job in the country outside Prime Minister, perhaps it is time Ponting surrendered the position. He first led the Australian Test team on 8th March 2004, meaning he could well be facing cricket's equivalent of the seven-year itch - and feels it's time to move on to new challenges but is yet to recognise and submit to those desires. His outward stance is that he's not finished. The inward position could be very different.

In the excellent ABC cricket documentary "Cricket in the 70s", Greg Chappell recounts being told by his brother Ian that he was resigning the captaincy. Ian Chappell, one of perhaps a handful of the most influential figures in Australian cricket ever, was only captain of his country for eight series over just five years; on telling his brother - and heir apparent - he was retiring he just said "Mate, when you know, you'll know". Chappelli had burned out, just as Greg would do in the early 1980s. Kim Hughes would suffer the same affliction in 1985. All three - and Border and Ponting, too - had been subjected to stresses never experienced by Steve Waugh or Mark Taylor.

Ponting's reign is beginning to resemble that of Greg Chappell: great batsmen weighed down by expectation as captain. Chappell rose above it to finish on a high, but captained Australia only in forty-eight Tests. Ponting nearly doubles that total with eighty. He's also slightly older, with a slightly more ropey technique and has nearly 360 ODIs to his name. It is fair and understandable that he is tired, tetchy and irritable.

The physical signs of stress are obvious to outsiders. Barack Obama has vast quantities more silver hair than he did only two years ago and, back home, Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd have both aged markedly while leading Australian politics. The US system of government allows a President to serve only two consecutive terms for two reasons - to share power and for the health of the President. Ponting looks old and tired.

These may be the last days of Ricky Ponting. If he goes, he won't be the first or last player to be "nudged" by the powers-that-be. It's a sad way for a star to go out, but the results of him hanging on may colour his captaincy even further in gloomy shades of blue.