All credit to Ricky Ponting for announcing his imminent retirement on the eve of his last Test rather than months beforehand. Best to get the pain over with as quickly as possible. Mind you, it was his successor Michael Clarke who looked the more emotional at the press conference.
Yes, there may have been detractors who were losing patience with Punter's performances in the current series and the man himself was the first to admit frustration with the way he has got out so often against South Africa. 24 runs in four innings is a paltry aggregate but no doubt he will go out with a bang in his final session at the crease. He has made a career out of big second innings scores so nothing can be ruled out.
And what a career it has been! 168 Tests, 375 ODIs plus 17 T20 outings add up to 560 international appearances, most of them on the winning side. He followed in Steve Waugh's considerable shoes as a highly successful captain, with an uncompromising, often abrasive, style. But that's how the Aussies like their leaders, and every time the English booed him his stock at home rose further. Of course his side uniquely contrived to lose not one, not two but three Ashes series. Tours of India also disappointed. However, 27,000 runs, 70-odd centuries and more than 360 catches in the Australian cause tell a tale of a brilliant batsman.
Bradman was unique and Greg Chappell excelled in an era dominated by fast bowlers, but Ponting the batsman has shone brighter in the last seventeen years than anyone apart from, perhaps, Brian Lara and Sachin Tendulkar. Until recently he was the most successful number three apart maybe from Rahul Dravid. From the callow youth with a little goatee I recall from the mid 90s to the still youthful-looking 37 year-old veteran, he has experienced the inevitable ups and downs, on and off the pitch (what Aussie legend hasn't?!). In the previous decade, he had few peers, aggregating more than 2000 Test runs in 2003, 2005 and 2006. In 12 Tests of 2005-6 he struck eight centuries, and on three occasions (once against the Windies at Brisbane and twice against South Africa, home and away) hit two in the same match. An astonishing run of form, and achieved as captain, too.
Ponting's departure means that just two of the batting legends of the past two decades remain on the international scene: Tendulkar and Jacques Kallis. No doubt there will be added pressure on both to quit while ahead, but they should resist. The Little Master has had bad runs before but inevitably this one is being attributed to either advancing years or lack of effort. Or both. Let's face it, he's been there, done it, got the T-shirt. The biggest global star cricket has ever produced. The SA all-rounder has nothing to worry about form-wise; for him, it's all about playing on until the motivation or body tell him to stop. Punter has called time on his own career on his own terms, and that is surely the way for a sporting superstar to do it. Even the hardest core of England supporters must begrudgingly admit Ricky Ponting will be missed.
