A farewell to Ricky Ponting

Ricky Ponting has announced that the Perth Test will be his last. As one can probably infer, I never really liked Ponting. I came to cricket just before Ponting became captain and in many ways Ponting embodied Australia to me. He was an unbelievably talented batsman for most of his career, clearly cared deeply about the game and had a desire to win at all costs. He was also apt to lose it if things started really going against him and in recent years has been an easy target of mockery. But he was undoubtedly a great of the game and it is always momentous and a bit sad to see one go regardless of who you support or what you thought of them.

Ponting made the right move by retiring now; he was not yet embarrassing himself, but his first innings dismissal at Adelaide was close and I expect that the last thing he, or any cricket fan, wanted was for the selectors to make the decision for him. My partisan instincts would have preferred that he stayed on, of course, but the game is better for him to retire now with dignity and I am glad that he did.

The first part of my tribute to the illustrious career of Ricky Ponting is a reminder of what of the best/most incredibly annoying innings: the match-saving 156 he made at Old Trafford in 2005.

The second part of my tribute is not, or at least not yet, posting the Gary Pratt incident from the subsequent Test.

Captaincy issues

I have been having a very interesting discussion on Twitter about the merits of various styles of captaincy. This was born, probably fairly predictably, out of a different discussion about Andrew Strauss’ place in the current England side. There were two very interesting questions raised: is captaincy skill reason enough to justify selection and what skills are most important for a captain?

With regard to the first question, I would answer ‘yes’ in almost all cases. The captaincy is almost a specialist position in itself and skill or lack thereof there can have as much an impact on the match as runs or wickets directly taken by the player. The best example of this is probably Mike Brearley. Brearley is rightly famous for his captaincy and boasts not only the fifth highest W/L ratio all time (amongst Englishmen he is behind only Douglas Jardine) but also a record of 11 wins and just one loss in 15 Ashes Tests. He also had a Test batting average just under 23. The goal of a Test match is to win and it is clear that a very good captain can increase the odds of winning even if he or she is a poor batsman. The question of selection is not then ‘pick the best five or six batsmen, a ‘keeper and four or five bowlers’, it is a more general matter of picking the eleven players whose combination of skills provide the best chance of winning a Test match. Depending on the circumstance, one might have a team with very skilled players who can carry a poor captain (eg: Ricky Ponting in the Warne/McGrath era) or one might have a team in which a very good captain causes his team to perform at a higher level than they would otherwise and is thus worth more to the team than a better batsman/bowler. I prefer the latter, but clearly both can work. It is a matter for the selectors to determine which course the situation of the team requires.

How that relates to Strauss then ties into the second question of which skills are most important. As a captain, Strauss has been both lauded for his man-management and criticised for his negativity. The question is whether his captaincy is good enough to offset his form with the bat and I would say that it is. I have certainly not refrained from criticising Strauss when I have felt that it is warranted, but this does not mean I think he is anything other than a very good captain. He has the misfortune of being a captain whose weakest area, tactics, is the one most publicly visible. His work in uniting the dressing room, however, has been utterly astounding. Remember that he took over a very fractured one and managed to transition the ‘old guard’ out with a minimum of fuss whilst at the same time winning an Ashes series that we were not expected to. Since then he has managed to get the very most out of all the players (with the exception of Morgan) and has won the respect of the team. His influence has been visible in some of the ODI series where Cook has been in charge, most notably in India. Cook struggled to control the team when the results were not going their way, this is not something that happens when Strauss is in charge. His calm demeanour and the respect the players have for him has ensured that England have stayed professional even on the occasions where things have not gone their way.

This is not to say that I think tactical ability is completely unnecessary, merely that one can compensate for it. I actually rate Michael Vaughan as one of the best ever England captains because of his tactical genius, but what he and Strauss both exhibit is a massive amount of skill in one area or the other. As with the first question, we have a situation where both man-management and tactics can be successful with the right people in the right circumstances. Finding someone who can do both would be ideal, of course, but a rare luxury. As to which is ‘better’ it is a matter of opinion, but I personally prefer a tactician. As important as it is to have all the players behind the captain, one needs to look no farther than the 2005 Ashes to see the benefits of a tactically astute captain. Cricket is a cerebral game and if a captain can outthink the opposition then the battle is halfway won already. Again, good management can adequately compensate for tactics, but given a straight choice I would choose a tactician.

What does not work, however, is a ‘leader’. I have seen it suggested more than once and more than once have the selectors decided that the best player ought to get the captaincy. I almost think this is from people who watch too much football. In football, all the captain has to do is play well and ‘inspire’ the other ten men. Cricket is not the same, however. A cricket captain has to have something between his or her hears to succeed. To see that this does not work, one needs look no farther than Freddie Flintoff and Kevin Pietersen. (Though one is welcome to look back to Ian Botham too, if one wishes.) Both were unmitigated disasters. Both were captains who played very well, but were tactically inept and could not control the players.

All of the above should give a good indication of why Strauss should have a very secure place in the side. He is not a perfect captain, but there are very few of those and he is a very good one. His captaincy provides more to the side than the runs of another batsman would (and that’s even assuming that Strauss’ contributions with the bat are and will continue to be negligible, neither of which I think are true), if he is dropped the side will be worse off overall.

Armchair selector: An Australian winter’s tale

Australia’s 75 run win in Dominica secured a 2-0 series victory, their second consecutive series win. They have now not lost a Test since their seven run defeat against New Zealand at Hobart. Unfortunately for them, they do not now play another Test until next winter. Obviously they do not entirely control the relevant parts of the Future Tours Programme, but I do think that Cricket Australia may have missed a trick by not trying to schedule something more than five ODIs for the summer. Despite their victories, we have seen some clear gaps in the side recently and there is really nothing to be done to repair them until what must be, for both Cricket Australia and the Australian public, alarmingly close to the 2013 Ashes. With that series in mind, this is how I see the current Australian side:continue reading part I and part II on the Armchair Selector…

Should Ponting retire?

Ricky Ponting had a much awaited press conference a few hours ago to announce that he was okay with being dropped from Australia’s ODI side. Not in so many words, of course, but he did not say that he was actually retiring from anything, just that he didn’t expect to be selected in any more ODIs. I suppose it was new that he had been permanently axed, as opposed to just dropped for the series, but I think most people suspected that was the case anyway. The only thing of note that he said was that he was not retiring from Tests, which was probably not cause for and entire press conference. In fact, as far as press conferences go it was probably most underwhelming since a few years ago when Nasa announced their discovery of microbes that used arsenic in their DNA*.

The rest of this post is now on The Armchair Selector! I’ve explained why here, but if you already know or don’t care then keep reading the article here!

The fact that Ponting will not be retiring from Tests would seem to confirm that he intends to play in the 2013 and 2013/14 Ashes. He probably does have a couple of years left in him, but if he had gone out now (or soon) he would be going out on a high. As it is, I think his form will fall away again, if not against South Africa in a year then in the Ashes. He has had a very good series against India, but their bowling has been worse than uninspired. It’s worth remembering that against South Africa, against a good attack on reasonably helpful wickets, he scored only 70 runs in four innings. Worse, when he played on a Hobart pitch that was most similar to what he will find in England he made five and 16 against a talented, but hardly world beating attack. If he stays on for the Ashes he risks being humiliated by England’s powerful seam attack. Ponting will very likely score runs in the Windies, and perhaps afterward as well, but right now he has the chance to bow out on a high. Staying longer will jeopardise that and I doubt it will be a good idea for him in the long term.

It’s a difficult situation for Australia, however. Ponting staying one would appear to be a boost on the face of it; he is in form and looks like he still has runs in him and at the same time their younger players do not look ready yet. Unfortunately they do not have very many series before the Ashes. After touring the West Indies next month they do not play again until they host South Africa this winter. If Ponting struggles, either against South Africa or later in the first Ashes series, Australia are effectively stuck with him through the 2013/14 Ashes. This is a very risky policy; I don’t think Ponting will bat well in the Ashes and whilst someone like Khawaja or Marsh may not be an improvement, I think Australia would be well advised to look for a replacement for Ponting sooner rather than later. That said, it’s very difficult to drop a batsman with the record of Ponting, especially before there is a clear replacement. I don’t expect the Australian selectors to do so, but Ponting has put them in what appears to be a no-win situation.

The best case scenario for Australia is that Ponting plays reasonably well through the double Ashes series, then bows out and Australia can find his replacement and get him settled into the squad by 2016. I don’t think that’s likely, however, and I don’t think staying on is a good idea for Ponting or Australia.

*For the handful of people who aren’t familiar with that incident, Nasa publicised the press conference several days in advance as an announcement of an important discovery relating to the search for extraterrestrial life. The fact that they had discovered entirely earthbound, albeit interesting, microbes made it rather a damp squib.

Four down, 11 to go…

India have so far done better than I expected they would in the ODI series. They have won matches against both Sri Lanka and now Australia, as the series continues to drag on. After four matches, Australia and India each have two wins, though for some reason Australia got an extra point when they won the first match and are thus topping the table. (If someone knows why, please tell me in the comments, as I can’t seem to find an explanation.)

Australia have looked a bit feeble; their top order collapsed in Melbourne and Perth and did not look perform that well in Adelaide. They ended up winning easily in the first match, but they barely survived an Angelo Mathews blitz in Perth and could not survive MS Dhoni in Adelaide. India for their part have played better than I expected; MS Dhoni has finally remembered how to hold a bat and whilst their bowling has not been exceptional it has been respectable. Australia must be worried about the performance of their top order, however. It wasn’t impressive in the Test series and it hasn’t redeemed itself so far in the ODIs. Ponting hasn’t batted at number three in Tests for a while, so I’m not sure why he’s up the order in ODIs, but it does not look like a sound strategy at this point.

Although I predicted Australia to do well in the ODIs, it was mostly due to the the relative skill of the opposition. I’m not actually too surprised that Australia have not looked overpowering. Their tope order was mostly absent in the Test series as well and we already knew they weren’t the force they once were. Australia have plenty of time to recover, however: we’ve only played four of a scheduled 15 matches.