Punter plays straight

When Ricky Ponting woke up yesterday morning to learn that Steve Waugh had decided to make himself available for Australia's tour to the West Indies, he might have permitted himself at least a smile. If Waugh is selected this evening, he will tour as captain; Ponting, installed as Waugh's successor in the one-day team at this World Cup, knows that the bigger prize of leading the Test side has been put on hold, but not for long.

He might turn out to be an inspired appointment to succeed Waugh as the leader of cricket's finest team. Or he might not. The Tasmanian they call 'Punter' knows as well as anyone that he has much to prove, and winning the World Cup in the absence of Waugh would go a long way to convincing people that he is up to the job. In the mind games that increasingly dominate the international game, one or two of his opponents at this tournament suggested that he might not be tactically astute enough yet, that he was lucky to be leading a team that almost needs no leading.

But that is idle sledging, the sort of unsubtle psychological warfare that Waugh used to indulge in and which, no doubt, Ponting is learning.

Before Australia played England in their final qualifying match in Port Elizabeth, Ponting was asked if Brett Lee would try to match Shoaib Akhtar's feat of breaking through the 100mph barrier. The captain had already signalled during the one-day VB series in Australia that he wanted the fast bowler to concentrate on accuracy at the expense of speed, and now he reiterated the sentiment. Lee would not be bowling the full length needed to give the speed gun its best nudge, because such deliveries are often snicked or sliced to the boundary.

Instead, said Ponting, Lee would bowl back of a length, cutting his pace, and put pressure on the batsmen to get the ball away. Of course, Lee came out and nearly burst his boiler trying for the speed record.

It is a captain's prerogative to mislead the opposition; it's just that if you do it too often with writers weary of such games, you lose credibility.

In many ways, though, Ponting is wholly candid. Going through a brief run drought before Christmas but satisfied that he was still in good nick, he said that he would not be doing extra nets, waiting instead for his form to produce runs. He was back among the runs before long.

On his day - of which there have been many - Ponting is a delight to watch. His footwork and his eye for spotting a bad ball can make the best bowlers sweat. He also gives patient adversaries more chances than some of his colleagues - although Adam Gilchrist and Matthew Hayden lately have not looked too cautious at the crease and have paid for it.

Ponting, meanwhile, is willing to trust his team. Perhaps his laid-back approach, as opposed to the disciplinarian era of Waugh, is setting a new tone. Ponting knows how good his team-mates are, and there will always be someone in the order to retrieve the situation. Lately it has been Michael Bevan and the redoubtable Andy Bichel, whose partnerships after collapses got the Australians home against England and New Zealand.

Not that Ponting likes living on the edge all the time, whatever his propensity for a good gamble. Given the status of this cricket team in Australian society, his responsibility to ensure victories is even greater. When you have the prime minister on television almost daily extolling the virtues of the team, it goes beyond sport.

It was not always like this for Ponting. Once, he was the very caricature of a sporting larrikin....

It was as early as it was late, with the sun coming up on King's Cross, Sydney's grubby yet oddly charming red-light district, and Punter found himself alone at the bar.

Whether he was looking for anything but a quiet drink before dawn when he fetched up at the Bourbon and Beefsteak Bar is problematic. But he got more than he could have bargained for: a right-hander from a stranger who no doubt has since embellished his own legend with a colourful version of how he knocked out one of Australia's finest batsmen.

That was three years ago. The B&B in 2003 is a quieter venue, patrolled not just by bouncers but the local police. Signs in Australian drinking establishments now tell customers that they will be thrown out if intoxicated, once compulsory just to get in. A nation built on rebellion seems not as wild as it was. It is an increasingly self-confident place and its citizens see less need to shout loudly at the world.

Ponting has changed, too.

Punter is 27 and, reined in by responsibility, every day and in every interview he sounds more comfortable as the obvious successor to Waugh. Nobody will be listening more closely to the announcement of the Test squad than Ponting. He figures that this is his time and you could hardly blame him if he felt resentful handing back the leadership after having had a taste of it with the one-day team.

Like his country, Ponting has grown up. When he goes out on the town after a match now, he first has to give a press conference, to play the game of words demanded of all leaders.

Here are a few of his recent thoughts, ranging from the banal to the subtle. See if you can detect, for instance, what he really thinks of Shane Warne.

'Everyone kind of expected something like this was going to happen, but when it actually does come out and you find that one of your mates and team-mates and one of the greatest players the game has seen has been suspended, it's very disappointing for everyone. It has brought the guys closer together.'

A clue: 'disappointing' is code for mad as hell. Bringing the 'guys closer together' means that they have talked about it and they are all hacked off with Warne.

And do you think he spares much sympathy for the injuries suffered by Sri Lanka captain Sanath Jayasuriya at the hands of an Australia bowler? 'You never want to see anyone get seriously hurt [Jayasuriya has a broken finger and a badly bruised forearm courtesy of Lee] - and hopefully he hasn't been seriously injured - but it's a World Cup and we're trying to bowl where the batsmen are least likely to score. If that happens to be at the body, then it will be at the body.

'We're not going to go out there and bowl him wide ones because he's going to smack us over cover or point every time. That [the ball bowled at the body] is a weakness in his game and we've picked up on that of late and we've been able to execute that pretty well.'

On his team: 'No, I wouldn't say we're arrogant. We've got a lot of very good players in a very good team and we back ourselves to win from any situation.'

This sums him up best, probably. You can hear the gambler in Ponting, almost glad that the team have to be stretched, then prove against the odds that they can win from anywhere.

And, finally, what does Ponting really think of England? Before the match in Port Elizabeth, he described them as 'a very good and dangerous side'. After Australia got out of jail to ruin Nasser Hussain's winter completely, he reckoned that England always would have in the back of their mind that Australia were better than them, which is why they lost.

It was almost like listening to Steve Waugh.