CRICKET:RICKY PONTING'S on-field protest yesterday following the decision to give Kevin Pietersen not out after a referral on day two of the fourth Ashes Test seemingly betrayed signs of a captain in crisis.
The Tasmanian engaged in lengthy debates with both the on-field umpires at the MCG after video replays indicated the England batsman had not nicked a delivery to Brad Haddin.
Although Pietersen, then on 49, made only two more runs before his dismissal to Peter Siddle, the damage had been done by Ponting and the Australia skipper was later fined 40 per cent of his match fee after pleading guilty to showing dissent to the umpires.
While Ponting’s weary face has adorned the front pages of many of Australia’s newspapers with none-too-friendly headlines this series, the reaction to his latest crisis has been less hostile than may have been expected.
Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, Peter Roebuck offered sympathy for a man who is captaining a side far poorer than those he has led in the past, saying: “Some will demand the severest penalty for the infraction. Indignation was widespread. Certainly it was not a good look. In mitigation, Ponting did not curse or cheat, and did not carry on after. He lost his temper but not his dignity.
“Better than anything else, though, the incident suggested the home captain is at his wits’ end. In that state of mind a small thing can become a big thing.
“Ponting is a proud man whose team has been taken apart. The end is nigh for Australia and quite possibly its mostly measured leader.”
Another to suggest that Ponting is finding life at the top harder and harder was Malcolm Conn of the Australian, who commented: “During his playing days Steve Waugh would carry a lucky rag with him. Yesterday Ricky Ponting lost his and punched another hole in Australia’s oft-mentioned spirit of cricket pledge.
“The statesman’s cloth which has been sewn piece by piece around Ponting for much of the past decade fell away again when he took exception to a video referral involving a caught-behind against Kevin Pietersen which went in the batsman’s favour. Ponting’s disrobing revealed the Mowbray street fighter. The kid who would have given as good as he got playing Australian football against the men of Launceston in a previous sporting life.
“It appears as though the mounting frustration of a difficult summer all came bubbling out.”
One thing all of the correspondents agree on is that Ponting, with fewer than 100 runs to his name from seven innings this series, is desperate.
Under the headline “Petulant Ponting”, Michael Horan penned in the Courier Mail: “It was a strange and futile – even desperate – display from the Australian captain.”
