CricDigs Blogs

For those who haven’t wasted as much time I have, watching movies over the last decade might have missed a masterpiece called ‘The Shawshank Redemption’. The movie had been an Oscar nominee and had one famous line quoted by Morgan Freeman — “Now, hope is a dangerous thing my friend.” What he meant was that when misplaced, Hope could be a killer rather than being a saviour. So what does that have to do with the case of Ricky Ponting? Well, in a way it does, since I am quoting it as an example. Ponting faces the crisis of a lifetime, a captain’s worst nightmare. His problem lies in the fact that that he is Hoping that somehow his players will fill in the boots left empty by the like the McGrath, Gilchrist and Warne rather than putting his thinking cap on and using the best of his available resources.

Ponting’s wishful thinking that some of his current team members might come as good as those retired is causing more damage to the team rather than spurring them on. His emphasis should be on making each one of the Aussie team members do what they can individually do best. That has been the Aussie mantra for a long time and suddenly Ponting seems to be losing focus of it. Take the case of Hayden. He came to India with the preconceived notion that he would have to repeat his antics of 2001, be the guiding force for the rest of the batting and make sure that the vacancies created by the absence of Gilly and Symonds aren’t felt. The result — he had a miserable tour by his standards. Now, compare this with his opening partner in the series — Simon Katich. He came with not too much baggage on his shoulders and just the idea that he had to do the best he could. The result — he was probably the most composed of Aussie batsmen.

Brett Lee too created demons in his mind like Hayden. All the talk about taking up the cradle of the Aussie bowling attack and being the tormentor for the Indian team got to his head and he bowled nowhere to his best. It was Ponting’s job to make sure that such thoughts didn’t house themselves in his player’s mind. But he did let it happen. Why? I think simply because his own mind was cluttered with the notion of making sure that he breaks his patch of low-strung scores in India rather than trying to comfort his men. His redemption lies in one simple thing. Forget what Greg Chappell or the Waughs say about him or the Aussie media that keeps drowning itself in a pool of self-created misery with regards to the retirement of some Aussie legends from the game.

Yes, it will take some time to make up for the absence of such cricketing geniuses but just HOPING that it will happen now because the team needs it most won’t work. Hope doesn’t work that way. It never has and never will. Morgan Freeman was right in a way — some understood it while most thought it to be an old man’s foolish wisdom. Well, to be honest I am not the smartest of people myself. It took me watching the movie thrice, over two years and discussing it with scores of people to get a hang of what he meant.