Ponting:Clever as the devil and twice as pretty

It was summer of 2003, I was in my 2nd standard and had started to get facinated by cricket due to the ongoing world cup , where Indians were dominating and had reached the finals. Then came the day of the final against that mighty Aussies, hoping India to win unaware of the tormentation that Ricky Ponting would give us.

Ponting was ruthless on that day , he made 140* which made the final one-sided and Aussies won it comfortably. As kid , i was heartbroken and this was where my journey of hatred for Ricky Ponting started. There was even an rumour that he had spring in the bat , which is quiet funny now but then it made me hate him even more. There were multiple instances like the series in Australia in 03-04 where he scored consecutive double hundreds , the infamous sydney test etc which made Ponting a villan in my eyes.

And , also there were instances where Ponting failed and that made me very very happy like the runout of him in Ashes-05 which left him fuming, not winning an away ashes , not winning a single test as a captain in india, being puppet of harbhajan singh .

But, when he announced his retirement in 2012 against South Africa in Perth, suddenly I was feeling something different , I felt like there’s something that’s being taken away from me. This is where i realised that even though I thought Ricky as a villan in some way I followed his whole career like I followed Sachin’s or Rahul’s. When I look back at his career or his move of him playing under Michael Clarke and helping youngsters or his stint at MI where he dropped himself to make a way for Rohit and lastly, his coaching stint at DC I just get nothing but respect for him , he was the reason which made my childhood interesting and awesome. If there would have been no Ricky Ponting , my childhood would have been a little boring.

Thanks Ricky for making my childhood awesome.