Ricky Ponting was born in December 1974, just as England’s last few fingers were being prised from the Ashes. He came to cricket maturity during an era in which the trophy was regarded as an Australian birthright, and never looked a more accomplished leader than in the summer of 2006–07 when England was flayed five-zip. But this northern sojourn could be regarded as his Ashes acid test.
While nearly 23 000 international runs appear to brook no argument, Ponting’s Test average in England is a modest 42, as distinct from 58 everywhere else. Ponting prospers when the ball is bouncing, for his pet pull shot, and deviating relatively little, so he can play his bread-and-butter leg-side strokes with impunity; English conditions sometimes make it hard for him. He compiled a century in his first innings on English soil, but his two hundreds since came amid first a defeat, then a draw interspersing two defeats. Snip the relevant Tests out and his average dwindles to 28.
Ponting bounced back smartly from the disappointments of 2005; indeed, some part of him probably found them motivating, for he tackled the rematch with a cold, iron will. Yet he returns to England with a team that looks to him now more than ever. Australia’s middle order in the last year has been as volatile as the Dow, with Michael Hussey tentative, Andrew Symonds vagrant and Adam Gilchrist absent; even vice-captain Michael Clarke, with whom Ponting shared the Allan Border Medal, was below par in South Africa. Sometimes, as during Ponting’s asymmetric double of 101 and 99 during the Boxing Day Test, he seems to be playing in a different game to his teammates. Once in a while, especially during the gruelling Nagpur Test in which his captaincy was harshly belittled, he might almost have wanted to.
In Ponting’s favour this summer is England’s attack, which will hold few terrors for him. That bodes well for Australia. Twenty-seven of Ponting’s thirty-seven Test hundreds have been compiled in eighty-nine winning causes—a remarkable ratio. He has the gift, in other words, not merely of making runs, but of making them in circumstances that combine successfully with the efforts of others—his runs have what an economist would call a multiplier effect. The effect seems to work on himself too. Ponting always looks the more poised and decisive captain when he is batting fluently, with the corollary that, unlike Mark Taylor, his leadership authority appears to dwindle, or at least not be exercised so confidently, when his scores thin.
Although the team Ponting brings with him is nominally less impressive than four years ago, it looks more assuredly his. There is no John Buchanan speaking in riddles. There’s neither Warne nor McGrath, neither Hayden nor Langer; the batting’s other survivor is flinty Simon Katich, to whom Ponting is close. The attack bowled for Ponting in their dreams before the chance to do so in reality, and have played under no other captain. Ponting’s trip matters in another ineradicable respect. While he has taken steps to be fresh for his Ashes challenge, skipping both the Indian Premier League and Australia’s Dubai derby against Pakistan, it’s possible that this will be his last trip to England, for he will be in his thirty-ninth year by the time the next is scheduled, and his young family is expanding.
Towards the end of his career, Steve Waugh was apt to invoke India as his ‘final frontier’. England now occupies a similar place in Ponting’s objectives.