His story explains why he played the way he did
Reviewed by Rohit Mahajan

My Autobiography: At the Close of Play
by Ricky Ponting
Harper Sport. Pages 700. Rs 999

the Pontings were "working-class people from a working-class part of Launceston". Launceston is a town in the island of Tasmania, a state that lies 150 miles south of the Australian continent — this would be absolute backwaters even now, let alone the 1970s of Ricky Ponting's childhood.

Ponting's grandfather was a miner and a labourer. His father drifted through various jobs before finally becoming a groundsman. The Ponting family lived in a part of the town which "always had a bad reputation".

"Launceston is divided by the Tamar river, one side was middle class and nice and the other side was where we lived," Ponting writes. Where Ponting lived wasn't middle class and nice.

When he came across the city slickers of Sydney or Melbourne, he was acutely aware that he was something of a hick.

For the amateur psychoanalyst, an account of Ponting's life leads to an obvious deduction — his origins and personality suggest the presence of a strong inferiority complex in his mental make-up. This is an observation, not a judgement: Who, after all, is not haunted by the past, who's immune to fear and self-doubt?

His feeling of inadequacy possibly produced, as compensation, the aggression, determination and sense of superiority in Ponting the individual and, consequently, Ponting the cricketer. This prognosis seems logically infallible.

However, it must be noted that the Australian cricketer, as a type, is tough and aggressive. Ponting takes after the toughest, nastiest (on the field) of this species, like Ian Chappell, Dennis Lillee and Allan Border.

Ponting's book throws light on the provenance of these "ugly Australians". "I was sledged more in my first season with Mowbray than I would ever be sledged again in my life," Ponting writes.

Ponting’s autobiography is an unflinching effort. In this photo, he is playing with his one-year-old daughter Emmy. Off the field, he was a very different man

At that time, Ponting was almost a child playing with older men. They gave him a hard time, with nasty sledging and cut-throat cricket. They made him a tough schoolboy cricketer. Ponting hated to lose and was super-aggressive — that, he says, was his "game face". "But that was actually what I'm like as a cricketer," he writes. "The person off the field, not wearing a helmet, is a different man." Possibly true, but this dichotomy could be difficult to understand for a player or observer from a completely different sporting culture. Ponting was a prodigy whose initial years in international cricket were troubled — there was a forcible eviction from a nightclub in Kolkata, a black eye after a brawl in a London pub. As Ponting writes about his problems with drink, you sympathise with him — his father was liable to "belt" him; when 13, the older cricketers would give him a can of beer; his time away from his family started at 15, when he joined a cricket academy.

Ponting's formative years are the most fascinating chapters of his book - his father's love for sport, his initiation into cricket, playing for Tasmania at 17 and for Australia at 20. Equally fascinating are the chapters in which Ponting details the ebbing of the genius. Self-doubt and failure preyed on his mind. It's sad but spellbinding. For a proud man, it must have been mortifying to detail his humiliation. Ponting doesn't spare himself.

Ponting's autobiography seems to be an unflinching, honest effort. This may be difficult for the fanatics among fans in India to believe, because his name — after the ugly Test in Sydney 2008 — has become a byword for dishonesty and gamesmanship. At one point in the book, writing about Michael Slater, Ponting says that, "We get a bit defensive when people question us". Maybe this explains why he questions the integrity of the Australian journalists who criticised him after Sydney 2008. "Maybe some of them saw India as a potential source of income and were tailoring their reports and criticisms for this new audience," Ponting writes. That sounds like a cheap shot.

Ironically, one of Ponting's co-writers was also keen to appear in print in India — it certainly doesn't mean that he would have tailored his views for the Indian audience. Ponting doesn't have any doubt about his own integrity —he devotes chapters to Bravery, Family, Honesty, Loyalty and Trust, Patriotism, and Mateship — the essentials of nationalism. He's certainly no internationalist. A great chunk of this 700-page book is devoted to his career as batsman and captain. Ponting made the most of his boundless talent, became the standout batsman of a great team and played the game with a fierceness and, possibly, honesty. This book just might make the Indian cricket fan give Ponting his due.

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