Aussie selectors keeping up the ruthless tradition of basing their selections (and forced retirements) on Ashes and World Cup cycles whether or not players still have cricket left in them!!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/cricket/article-1368943/CRICKET-WORLD-CUP-2011-Ricky-Ponting-leave-Australia-captaincy-head-held-high.html](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/cricket/article-1368943/CRICKET-WORLD-CUP-2011-Ricky-Ponting-leave-Australia-captaincy-head-held-high.html)
He is seemingly being dragged ranting and raving into retirement, an undignified end for a great player and a man who conducts himself far better off the field than he does on it. If Ricky Ponting is about to make his last appearance for Australia - and defeat by India in Ahmedabad on Wednesday would seem certain to signal the end - then he deserves to be remembered as the second best batsman his country has produced after Don Bradman and second only to Sachin Tendulkar among the modern greats. But his exit is proving far removed from the fanfare of tributes he deserves.
**Sportsmail reveals that Ponting is planning to retire from international cricket as soon as Australia are knocked out of the World Cup, and wants to end his career captaining a county. **
He is determined to jump before he is pushed, his ratty behaviour in this tournament betraying frustration at not being able to go out on his own terms, as a winner and his country’s most successful leader. Such a brilliant player - he has hit 39 Test hundreds and 29 one-day centuries and proved himself a worthy captain - should not be forced to consider his future amid recriminations over his onfield behaviour and whispers among his own board that the time has come to end an era. But Ponting has brought it on himself. His desperation not to be remembered as the captain who lost three Ashes series has increased his bad behaviour, as his spat with the umpires over their failure to dismiss Kevin Pietersen in the Melbourne Test over Christmas emphasised.
In this World Cup, his conduct has been akin to the thrashings of a drowning man. First Ponting was disciplined for damaging a dressing room TV set. Then he admonished team-mate Steve Smith over a collision in the field, before refusing to walk against Pakistan when he had clearly edged the ball, a ‘sin’ amplified on the same weekend when Tendulkar walked in Chennai after umpire Steve Davies had ruled him not out against West Indies. Yet, this is one of the most impressive sportsmen I have met, a man who oozes class and authority, at odds with the foulmouthed bad loser we are now seeing more of in public.
The Ponting I have known is revered by his team-mates, respected by opponents and admired far more than Michael Clarke, who Cricket Australia seem determined to anoint as captain in their desperation to connect with a younger Australian public. It seems a metrosexual man with tattoos is more appealing than a cricketer and man of substance. The fact that Ponting privately believes Clarke has been trying to undermine him for some considerable time in a bid to take his job has just added to his angst.
On Tuesday Paul Marsh, chief executive of the Australian Cricketers Association slammed as ‘gutless and irresponsible’ an unnamed board official who has leaked that it is time for Ponting to go. Certainly it seems weak of Cricket Australia to do their bad-mouthing anonymously. It is not Ponting’s fault that, at 36, he was just young enough to play on for a couple of years beyond the plethora of greats who were able to bow out at the perfect time. Ponting should retire with a sense of pride, remembering how far he has come from the troubled youth who was beaten up in a Sydney bar 12 years ago and admitted he had a problem with alcohol.
The journey since then has been hugely successful but increasingly problematic. Now he intends to end it in the far more tranquil surroundings of an English county, being top dog. He deserves to hold his head high again.
… carried the WI Batting alongwith Chanderpaul for Many Years
