Ponting reveals doubts about Clarke

Ricky Ponting and Michael Clarke during Ponting's farewell series in 2012. Source: AAP

IN this exclusive extract from Ricky Ponting's new autobiography, 'At The Close Of Play', the former Australia captain reveals the serious concerns he had about Michael Clarke's personality within the national team.

Ahmedabad, the early hours of Friday, March 25, 2011

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I'D MADE A CENTURY, but the team had lost and it was hard to sleep because as much as I tried to stop the thought going through my mind I just knew it was the end. I decided to resign as Australia's Test and one-day captain after the quarter-final, not before.

The game had been on a Thursday and we didn't get back to the hotel until late. It was always hard to shut off after a game and a tournament, but never this hard.

Don't decide until the morning, I told myself.

I kept thinking about where I and the team were at. Three facts kept coming up: (1) this World Cup hasn't gone as we'd hoped; (2) I haven't got that long left in the game; and (3) the team's next big assignments are a fair way down the track.

The last one was the clincher. I couldn't hang on, even for another fortnight. It was the right time to give the next guy an opportunity.

I remembered how I'd been introduced to the captaincy: first, in one-day cricket and then two years later in Tests. This wouldn't be quite the same, but we did have a short ODI series in Bangladesh due to start in a couple of weeks.

The next Test series would be in Sri Lanka in August-September. The next big one-day tournament would be the ICC Champions Trophy in 2013, the same year we were due back in England to fight again for the Ashes.

This is not to say that standing down as captain was easy. It had been my life for so long. I was quitting arguably the most prestigious job in Australian sport.

Only 43 people had led Australia in a Test match. It would have been nice to be departing on the shoulders of my team-mates, victorious, rather than at a press conference after a defeat. One comfort was that it was totally my decision.

No one had knifed me; instead, a number of people tried to talk me out of it. Tim Nielsen thought it was vital I stayed in the job for as long as I could while the team was developing.

Senior figures from Cricket Australia contacted my manager, James Henderson, who had been looking after me since 2007, straight after the quarter-final to say, 'Don't let Ricky make any stupid decisions. At least make him hold fire until after the games in Bangladesh.'

But my mind was made up.

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I can honestly say that I had never considered stepping down before this - not after Cricket Australia let us down in 2007-08, or after we lost to South Africa at home in 2008-09, or after the Ashes in 2009, or even after the Ashes in 2010-11.

With that last one, I'd resolved to give the World Cup my best shot and then I'd contemplate the future. Throughout this period I always believed I was the best man for the job. In the aftermath of this decision, I wondered if most cricket captains have a shelf-life, that after a few years in the position it becomes increasingly difficult to keep things fresh, to keep challenging the players in different ways.

Maybe the twin pressures of leading a team that wasn't winning and scoring runs at No. 3 wore me down more than I was prepared to acknowledge at the time. Spending more than a day in the field and then, straight away, padding up and going out to bat never got easier, but I didn't want to move down the order. Not while I was captain.

No two situations are ever the same. In my case, whenever the Australian team I was leading was struggling, I knew my obligation was to be a better leader and a better player, for the team's sake not just my own.

If, during the toughest of times, I'd felt there was an alternative captain I would have stepped away, but I never felt there was anyone else who could do the job better than me. The people who appointed me thought the same. I couldn't walk away. That would have been the wrong thing to do.

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I rang Michael Clarke on the morning I made the announcement I was stepping down. We'd been back in Sydney just a couple of days and I was on my way to the SCG for the media conference.

It was only a brief chat, but a good one.

It was true that I'd been a little disappointed with some of the things he'd done - or more accurately, hadn't done - as vice-captain, but I was now comfortable with the idea of him taking over.

It wasn't that he was disruptive or treacherous, and publicly he said all the right things, but he had never been one to get too involved in planning sessions or debriefs at the end of a day's play, or to volunteer to take on any of the captain's workload.

More than once, Tim Nielsen and I had encouraged him to take on more of a leadership role within the group, but when Pup was down on form or if he had a problem away from cricket, he'd go into his shell.

I knew he was an excellent thinker on the game, but for a long time I was concerned that he wouldn't be able to handle the huge variety of 'little things' that go with being Australian captain. I wished him all the best and he thanked me for everything I'd done for him. He also said he hoped I was going to keep playing.

As things would turn out, Pup became a new man with the full-time 'c' next to his name. The leadership, in many ways, would be the making of him.

***

BACK IN 2004, I'd been the reason Michael made his Test debut. When I broke my thumb and had to miss the first three Tests in India, Pup was preferred to Brad Hodge as my replacement, in what must have been a close call.

It was the selectors who made that decision but from back in Australia, where I was working to get my thumb right, I fully supported their verdict, arguing that it was time to 'give the young bloke a go'. Pup justified his selection in superb style, scoring 151.

A few weeks later, when he scored another hundred during his first Test appearance on home soil, it seemed we had found our next great batsman.

However, his progress stalled over the course of the next 12 months, and by the following Australian season, 2005-06, it was obvious he was about to be dropped. He wanted me to be the one who told him he was out, even though I wasn't a selector, which I think showed how close we'd become. I'd taken him under my wing a bit, as a mate and as his captain.

Pup promptly went back to the Shield and scored a double century. He then batted beautifully in a Chappell-Hadlee Trophy series in New Zealand and was picked for the tour of South Africa and Bangladesh at the end of that summer, but it wasn't until he made consecutive hundreds during the 2006-07 Ashes series that his place in the team was assured.

At the end of that series, as we walked around the SCG acknowledging the fans, all of us wearing sunglasses to hide our tears of joy, I sidled up to Pup and said with a grin, 'How good is this? This is the way we're going to finish every series against England, right?'

I've always been big on passing lessons on, to make sure future generations are aware of the past and can learn from it, because that was what the senior players did when I first came into the team.

Pup and I had been in England in 2005; we knew how it felt to lose the Ashes and now we knew how good it felt to win them back. We'd come to appreciate the value of hard work, playing as a team and sticking strongly to the values the group had bought into. Or so I believed.

At that moment, I was sure Michael Clarke would be the man who'd pass these messages on after I was gone.

Over the next couple of years, my view changed. Pup remained a good trainer and we could all see that he loved playing for Australia and was determined to do well. But away from cricket, he moved in a different world to the rest of us.

It never worried me if a bloke didn't want a drink in the dressing room, but I did wonder about blokes who didn't see the value in sticking around for a chat and a laugh and a post-mortem on the day's play.

This was the time when we could revel in our success, pick up the blokes who were struggling, and acknowledge the guys who were at the peak of their powers. Pup hardly bought into this tradition for a couple of years and the team noticed.

At times, he reminded me of a teammate from earlier in my career, who'd be chirpy and bubbly if he was going well, but appear a bit grim if things weren't working for him. The best team-mates are the ones who can keep their moods in check for the sake of the group.

The blow-up with Pup and Kato after the Test in Sydney in the first week of 2009 wasn't in itself a big deal. I've seen worse arguments involving Australian cricketers.

I think the blue I had on the plane with Paul Reiffel back in 1996 was livelier, but it was indicative of an ongoing frustration a number of the senior players, including me, were having with our new vice-captain.

We wondered if he'd lost a little of his sense of team. It was our first significant Test win in exactly a year, almost certainly Matt Hayden's last Test, yet Pup wanted to get away.

I didn't actually witness what went on, but as I understand it he asked if we could do the anthem sooner rather than later, Mike Hussey said he'd have to wait, the point was pushed, Kato suggested Pup be patient, and when Pup continued to complain Kato grabbed him and again told him to be patient.

Okay, it might have been a bit spicier than that, but that was the gist of it. Michael left immediately after the confrontation, while we just shrugged our shoulders and said, 'That's Pup.'

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In 2010 Pup briefly returned to Sydney from New Zealand during an ODI series so he could sort a few things out in his life away from cricket. He was back a few days later, clearly grateful for the way we'd closed ranks around him. We'd always been there for him, if only he'd realised.

Like Warnie in the UK in 2005, Pup found sanctuary out on the field, the ground he knew best, and he promptly made a big hundred in the first Test against the Kiwis, and then in England batted as well as he'd ever done in his life.

I wouldn't say we were tight after that, but we were better. His official reign as Australian captain started on a high, with ODI wins in Bangladesh and ODI and Test wins in Sri Lanka, and he quickly took his batting to a new level, to the point that it seemed he could almost score big hundreds at will.

He was training hard when we were together and obviously doing a lot of extracurricular work on his fitness and his game as well, which was inspirational. He now seemed happy to take on the planning, media and administrative duties that he'd veered away from when he was vice-captain and the mood in the Aussie dressing room was positive. Perhaps I'd been wrong to be so concerned for so long.

****

I KNEW, WHEN I said I wanted to keep playing for Australia, that a few people were worried I might get in the way of the new captain, but I assured them that wouldn't happen. 'I'll help Pup out as much as I can,' I said. 'But only if I'm asked. If I'm not asked, I'll sit back and prepare and play like an everyday player.'

That was my plan, to slide into the background. Gradually, as time went by, I might begin to offer snippets of advice, but in the short term I decided to go back to the days when I was seen and not heard.

Quickly I realised that not being captain was a weight off my shoulders. I no longer had to worry about selections, playing conditions, what time we were seeing the match referee, when the next press conference was, what everyone else was doing, all those sorts of things.

Instead, I just had to turn up at the ground, get my fielding work done, my batting done and prepare as well as I could for each game. I was still around to help, but the sense of obligation, that I had to be doing something, was gone.

I was insulted by the critics who thought I might be a bad influence, that having a current captain and a former captain in the same dressing room couldn't work. The people who said this didn't know me, didn't understand that I've always played the game for the team's sake.

In fact, I believe the captaincy experience made me an even better team player, because I was now much more aware of what everyone else in the group was going through, how they might be thinking, and what was worrying them and maybe holding them back.

I'd learned over the previous nine years that an effective leader has to understand and appreciate all the different characters within his group, what motivates them, upsets them, inspires them. I would never have learned how to do this if I had stayed in my own shell.

***

I NEVER ADDRESSED THE team formally about the captaincy change.

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After we arrived in Bangladesh, I asked Tim Nielsen to mention it in passing at the first team meeting, to acknowledge, essentially, that a new era was beginning and we weren't going to dwell on the past. The change-over was largely pain-free. We played three ODIs, won them all, and I got a start in each game: run out for 34; 37 not out and, as an opening bat, lbw for 47.

There were a couple of awkward moments, chiefly of my own making, such as when it suddenly occurred to me, 24 hours into the tour, that no one had told me whether I was required at meetings of the team leadership group.

I knew what time the first get-together was starting, and where, but that was all. What to do?

I was still the most senior player. I had always chaired those meetings. Now, with Michael as captain, I wasn't sure if I was supposed to be there or not. It had never occurred to me to ask and now it was about to start, and my desire to make a good impression was causing me grief. I can't be late. I can't just not turn up. The phones weren't working. I couldn't get in touch with anyone. All I could do was go down there, knock timidly on the door and stick my head in.

There were four of them in the room: captain, vice-captain, coach, manager.

'Am I required here?' I asked.

'No, oops, sorry, we should have told you.'

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