Of all the daft things that have surfaced in this India-Australia series, the daftest has to be the gentleman's agreement between the captains about taking the fielder's word on catches. Kumble should have figured out that the agreement would break down at the pivotal moment when a catch made a vital difference. That’s exactly what happened. It’s common sense.
And if this were about the mythic spirit of cricket, why should a gentleman’s agreement be limited to claiming catches? Why not nicks? One can't blame umpire Benson for asking Ponting if Michael Clarke's catch was clean. That is what the captains had agreed to.
Kumble was naive (or gullible) to have agreed to Ponting's proposal. Jayawardene, one of the most gentlemanly modern players, was smart enough to turn down the same proposal.
The more interesting question is around why Ponting is proposing this agreement. It feels out of character. He has also made his team sign up to a spirit of cricket pledge. Which, in addition to feeling out of character, is bureaucratic and suggests Ponting does not understand that spirit describes what can't be codified.
What's going on here? Is Ponting trying to capture a special place cricket's pantheon that his gracelessness on the field just doesn't support?
Ronting's Australians are the easily the least loved champions in the history of cricket. Just think back to the reverence Clive Lloyd's West Indians inspired to get that into perspective. One of the defining memories of Ponting will be his spontaneous and passionate swearing after being run out by Gary Pratt at Trent Bridge in the 2005 Ashes. The day after the Sydney test, the BBC quoted a poll which showed 82% of Aussie cricket fans rating Ponting a bad captain, despite having delivered 16 wins on the trot. Does this lack of respect hurt prickly little Ponting?
The comparison that hurts Ponting most is with Steve Waugh. Like Ponting, Steve Waugh inherited a great team. Like Ponting, Steve Waugh played to win: his most important contribution to cricket's lexicon was the "mental disintegration" which did not happen to Saurav Ganguly. But Steve could take the Aussie team to lay a wreath at the ANZAC memorial at Gallipolli and look authentic. He raises money for Udayan, a charity for the children of lepers, without provoking a snigger. He won a special place in my heart when we spoke of how cricket would be poorer with Zimbabwe, deprived of quality players like Neil Johnson (one of my obscure personal favourites). Steve Waugh didn't do spin. He meant what he said. He cared. It showed. The gravitas came naturally.
Waugh's nicknames are Tugga and Iceman. Ponting's nickname is Punter. Maybe Ponting fears that he is destined to be a Miandad...snapping away in the shadows the the Imran like figures - Border, Taylor, Waugh - who came before him. Maybe an Indian captain can sense that insecurity, and twist a dagger into that chink in the armour, and engineer a "mental disintegration" at Adelaide that would make even Steve Waugh cringe.
Hope springs eternal :)
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