Ashes 2010 Preview: Ricky Ponting v the Ashes!

By Sreelata S. Yellamrazu

   It has boiled down to a contest between the Australian captain and plausibly the biggest battle of his captaincy career. The Ashes 2010 has the potential to be Ponting’s Waterloo. But can England sustain the epic momentum that has brought them once more within touching distance of a miracle? 
        Ricky Ponting faces the most arduous task of his long cricket career. And to keep up the aura of diamond roughened by the contests, he would still need to shine when the sunlight hits him come Thursday, the first day of the first Test of the Ashes at the Gabba in Brisbane. But for that, he will need more than his bat to do his bidding. The Australian team will have to rise to the occasion and occasion it will be given that the team, inexperienced, inept or raw as it may be, will have to compete in cricket’s most traditional five day contest against a rival that is heaped in cricket folklore.

       The problem for Australia is that it cannot even intimidate by way of past history. That is because the present team has neither the experience to back them nor the surety of the ground beneath their feet from which to launch. Although some would call it a good position to be suggesting that they have nothing to lose, the reality is that there is plenty to lose if they should lose the one place Australia has held the edge most firmly over England. After all England lost the last Ashes series down under in the 2006-’07 by a totally humiliating margin of 5-0.

       That, however, is not reason for Australia to feel buoyed. The England of 2010 are not the England post Ashes 2005 that crinkled and creaked and broke down by the time the team landed on Australian shores. The result then was merely a reflection of plans gone awry in the face of injuries, an incapacitated captain and a breakdown in team strategy. The reason England is even contemplating the idea that this could be England’s golden year when they break the Australian stranglehold over the Ashes down under in the past couple of decades is because Andrew Strauss has the team and the strategy.

        However, if team and strategy were everything, cricket would not live with the cliché of being a game of glorious uncertainties. Execution is the key which is why there is not only a sense of eager anticipation as well as closet fear. In a game when teams are closely matched in how they stack up overall, a small slide could lead down a treacherous road. The one that can hold onto the cliff will be the one who can boast of having survived another epic battle.

        The Ashes 2010 may lack the stars that make such battles glorious or the aura. But the idea of setting a new world order and of establishing a new team ethos in either team for future contests is motivation enough to walk onto the pitch tomorrow believing none is too small for this momentous occasion or this most fascinating game. Could this bring a new era of dominance from England or could the Ashes be the catalyst as Australia develop into a brand new force? 

      The Ashes has taken on a dramatic new meaning for Ponting himself. As the second Australian captain to lose the Ashes twice ( both times in England in 2005 and 2009), Ponting is already in dubious company. With another Ashes at stake, Ponting can ill afford to let the tide turn against him if he were not to wrest the Ashes urn away from England. That has been Australia's legacy. He certainly would not want the first captain in two decades to change that to the benefit of England.