The other reason they lost: Ricky Ponting never planned for losing

Sunday January 20, 01:46 AM

When you go into a Test match looking for a record 17th consecutive win, you have to be backing your chances. Australia tried this feat before - that time, in Kolkata 2001, they appeared to hold it in their fists, had forced a follow-on. Only to see V V S Laxman and Rahul Dravid post 461 runs between the two of them and push that dream 172 runs off its target. India proceeded to Chennai to win the decider and clinch the three-Test series, and Steve Waugh, then Australia captain, had failed to conquer "the last frontier" - that is, to win a series in India.

Ricky Ponting's Australia are, on paper, better placed after Perth. In a four-Test series, they have won Melbourne and Sydney. From here, the Border-Gavaskar Trophy cannot be lost.

When then do they already speak of "the end of the era?"

Memories in cricket can be conveniently short, so if this era is Australia's streak since losing the Ashes to England in the summer of 2005, it is obviously over. The statistician has said so. But a couple of losses after 16 Tests were just an interlude until Waugh gathered his men and went on to flaunt his team as perhaps the best in history.

This era that hints at its own end at Perth is much longer than Ponting's 16-win streak.

It began in the West Indies in 1995, when Mark Taylor's Australia, fortified by a double century by Waugh at Kingston at a time when Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh breathed dread into batsmen, won a series in the Caribbean after more than 20 years. West Indian supremacy was at an end, the baton had been passed.

The era is made of three men who led Australia: Taylor, Waugh, Ponting.

Taylor, the gum-chewing opener, who showed that narrow-eyed pursuit of victory could still keep you large hearted when he once declared Australia's innings at Peshawar while himself on 334 - 334 was Don Bradman's highest Test score.

The match was ultimately drawn, but Taylor's controversial declaration "in the first innings" has kept the conversation going as we find ways to choose our favourite cricketers.

Then there was Waugh. He was so tough on the field, always plotting - and seen to be plotting "mental disintegration." But then, he'd slip off to Kolkata and his good works. Even Sourav Ganguly's proudly partisan fans could not bring themselves to be angry with Waugh when he accused the Prince of Kolkata to be guilty of "match fixing" by "trying to influence the groundsmen in India."

On Waugh's watch, Australia became a dream machine. Once John Buchanan began to coach, calling in baseballers for fielding tips and talking of a time soon when the Australians would be ambidextrous, we began marking the gap between where Australia were headed and where the rest of the cricket-playing world was stalling.

It is in this New Australia that Ponting found his captaincy. He may not have been conquered to the point of delusion about the myth of Australia's inevitable supremacy. But just the talk of supremacy did weigh on him. Ponting is different from his predecessors, the only statement he has ever wanted to make has been on the scorecard.

And it can be argued that, once Anil Kumble and his Frontiersmen came calling, just the possibility of defeat became too difficult for him and his team to handle.

In Sydney, the trouble - not just for Indians in a partisan manner, but anyone out to enjoy a good five days of cricket - was not that Australia won because of umpiring errors. It was that they became defensive about those errors, errors not of their own making. Australia too obviously wanted to be rightful winners of that match - they had no plan B in mind.

That is what showed when Ponting, the winning man, became rude and indignant at a post-match press conference. It showed when their keeper, Adam Gilchrist, the man who famously walked in the 2003 World Cup, gave a humourless defence of his appeals - unsubstantial appeals that come naturally to other wicketkeepers, but have not usually to him.

That defensiveness is comforting. It hints to those of us who have respected Australian cricket that they knew they had gone too far in Sydney, on and off the field. It also makes sense - in a way that we may never be able to prove - that Kumble bowled an unplayable one when he decided to drop charges against Brad Hogg for abusive behaviour.

Because could that act of sportsmanship and the win today bring back to us at Perth an Australia we once knew? An Australian team that's tough but still knows that cricket is, in the end, still a game? A game that is there sometimes for the losing. Who would have thought India would compel Ponting to say, "We haven't been good enough."

Since when, skipper?