This past Thursday, two teams took to the field at the quarterfinals of the 2011 ICC World Cup being played in the Indian sub-continent. This contest was the biggest plot line of the World Cup so far. In one corner, Australia, the most dominant team in the last two decades, winning three of the last four finals they had been in, and in the other, India the country that had shown the rest of the cricketing world how to beat the once mighty West Indies in winning their only World Cup in 1983. This was, by leaps and bounds the biggest billing of the four quarterfinals matches.
The Showdown
There was one sub-plot that was almost as big as the main plot… With a combined 44 years of experience, over 1100 international caps, a total of 57000 runs and 167 centuries between them, two of the greatest players that cricket had ever seen – Sachin Tendulkar and Ricky Ponting – took to the field. Both of them knew that this could very well be their last World Cup match. At the advanced cricketing ages of 37 and 35 respectively, both Tendulkar and Ponting knew, that at the end of this day one of them would be ecstatic, while the other would be forlorn.
While similar in experience and records, the two couldn’t be any farther apart than the north & south poles. Tendulkar is the quintessential gentleman, adored by millions of fans, humble despite the genius that oozes out of his bat, carrying, on countless occasions, the team and its fortunes. Ponting, a great, smart cricketer and captain of the most dominant cricket nation over the last two decades, is in more ways than one, the anti-Tendulkar – arrogant, bordering on cocky, big-mouth, controversial, disliked (if not hated!) by the fans of the teams he had vanquished!
Poles Apart
Nothing quite sums up the distance between these two, better than the way they were dismissed in their previous matches. Ponting, having edged a ball, without the shadow of a doubt, waited for the umpire’s review, while Tendulkar in a similar situation, simply turned and walked despite the umpire believing otherwise. Tendulkar’s instinctive decision to walk portrayed Ponting in worse light than before - a cheat who wanted to win at any cost. I belonged to the sparsely populated camp, that believed Ponting had every right to stand his ground, well within the rules of the game, and wait for the umpires decision. I also thought that Tendulkar should have stood his ground, and let technology determine the outcome in a close situation.
India set a target of 261, largely because of a timely century by the afore mentioned Ponting, his first in 13 months, survived a few hiccups and tense moments to finally dethrone the defending champions. The pained expression on Ponting’s face was all too obvious for everyone to see as he realized that he had played what was almost certainly the last World Cup match of his splendid career.
Oh, how sweet this victory was. Not only did India put an end to a dynasty, this was payback for all the years of suffering that India had endured at the hands of the Aussies and their arrogant captain. Karma had caught up with Ponting for all those years of cheating. He was the ultimate villain who had gotten his comeuppance, with a disgraceful exit.
Now, I’m no big fan of Ricky Ponting’s, and I’d love to see him and his Australian team fail, but I draw the line at disgraceful. Sure he can be annoying with his arrogant attitude, sure he can push the boundaries of the game, sure he has been known to embellish the truth every now and then, and sure, he and his team gets into the grill of the opposition, and trash talk them at every opportunity. Does all of this warrant him being called disgraceful? No!
Ponting’s Perception Problem
As much as Ricky is responsible for digging some of the hole he is in, the fact that he is playing in the same era as Tendulkar doesn’t help his cause one bit. As a matter of fact, it magnifies every little thing that he does wrong. His waiting for the umpire to be given out wouldn’t have been too big of a deal, if it wasn’t for Tendulkar – that knight in shining armor who can do no wrong – walking off like a gentleman, in a similar situation the next day.
Try this exercise… On a clean white board, draw a tiny little circle with a dark colored marker. Find the next person that walks by and ask them what they see. Chances are that most, if not everyone you ask would see the dark marker, not all of that white space around the dark circle. Ponting finds himself as a dark circle surrounded by all that white space that Tendulkar represents.
Sadly however, that tiny circle is nothing when you compare it to some of the real disgraces that cricket has seen. Here are a few…
- Australian captain Greg Chappell directing his brother Trevor to bowl underarm, the last ball of the match that New Zealand needed four to win from
- English captain Douglas Jardine and his “Bodyline” series against Don Bradman and the Aussies
- A series of match fixing by South Africa’s captain, Hansie Cronje
- The South African rebel tours between 1982 & 1990
There have been far more disgraceful stuff done by people in other sports…
- Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson breaks the world record for the fastest sprint ever, and then is stripped of his gold medal, as he tests positive for doping
- The sexual assault charges on basketball player Kobe Bryant
- NFL quarterback Michael Vick and dog fighting charges
And need I say, many more…
Can We Give The Man His Due?
The point I try to make here is that whatever may be Ricky Ponting’s failings, they pale into insignificance when compared to some of the things others have done right in the sport of cricket as well as outside of it.
“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change” ~ Lao Tsu
So, yes, he is arrogant, cocky even, and yes, he has been a constant pain in the ass for India, and every other team for well over a decade. No, he is nothing like Sachin, nor is he going to win a lot of fan votes outside of Australia, but you simply cannot deny Ricky Ponting what is rightfully his – due credit for having been a great player and a great captain!
