Goodbye Ricky

WATCHED Ricky Ponting's last ever one-day international live last night.
Of course, we didn't know it was going to be his last. It's not often the captain - albeit a stand-in one - gets dropped straight after leading his side to a crushing victory against the world champions.
The determination was there. When Ponting came out to bat he wasn't so much facing India as facing up to his own mortality; watching the ball onto the bat as if he knew that one false stroke would be the end of him. It wasn't even the false stroke that got him either: on another day with slightly less riding on it the ball would undoubtedly have sailed over the fielder's head for six, another contemptuous shot from a man with all the skills.

PONTING'S demise as an ODI player doesn't just signal more change for the Australia cricket team: for many of us it's the passing of an era. I can still remember Ponting's Test debut at the WACA in December 1995. The match itself started two days after my 15th birthday, but I wasn't excited by the 20-year-old debutant: like most parochial Queenslanders I was more excited at seeing Stuart Law finally get his first baggy green. Both debutants made their mark with a 121-run stand that only ended courtesy of a decision that Wisden described as having "cruelly denied a hundred". Law made 54* - and was promptly dropped for the next Test in Melbourne. This left those of us north of the border particularly unimpressed that this youngster could just mosey on in and take his spot, notwithstanding the youngster passing judgement himself.

Fast forward a few years and Ponting drifted in and out of the Australian team the way I drifted through two different university courses. That Ponting had talent was undeniable; that he was having troubles channeling that talent (and dealing with turbanned off-spinners) in no doubt either. Still the talent was there, and with far-sighted selectors sticking with him Ponting's batting took off so successfully that by the time I'd started working a proper adult job, he'd led Australia to a remarkable 2003 Cricket World Cup win without the banned Shane Warne.

It's Ponting's dealings with adversity that best sums up the man though. Who of us would admit publicly to having an alcohol problem in their early 20s when getting ragingly drunk is pretty much the Australian way at that age; who of us would then be able to beat that problem? Even in the Ashes losses of 2005, 2009 and 2010/11 Ponting was quick to acknowledge that England had simply played better: sound advice for young men trying to find someone, something - anything - to blame other than themselves.

So now Ponting's ODI career is over; his Test career can't be too far behind. For those of us of a certain age watching friends get married, have children and acquire mortgages, it's as though that free-spirited chapter of our lives has been closed off as well. And as much as we might have willed that ball to pop out of Irfan Pathan's hands had we known, I guess we always knew this day would come.