A captain's break

It’s something that is difficult to express in words but every batsman who has merely leant on a cover drive and feels that magic thrill when it bisects two fielders and speeds to the boundary will understand some things defy description or explanation. For that brief moment, it feels like a gift from the gods and there is no logical explanation. It's all about timing.

Timing is a strange beast though. Sometimes, inexplicably, it deserts you. Everything else seems perfectly normal and the bat swing is exactly the same as it always has been but the magic just disappears.

Ricky Ponting understands this better than most. For a man whose greatness as a batsman can never be questioned, his timing has deserted him lately. On the field, he has struggled to find fluency in his last few innings, mistimed a second run on the bullet arm of Neil Broom and then completed a day of poor timing by falling horribly behind the over-rate. These things happen sometimes. It’s hardly a hanging offence, this temporary lack of timing.

Off the field though, whoever decided that Ponting was going to be rested for the rest of the ODI series against NZ needs to have a long think about their timing. To be fair to Ponting, it may not have been his decision. Cricket Australia may have insisted on it. For all we know, Ponting may have questioned the timing of this ‘rest’ but may have been overruled by the men in suits.

This is not the time to be seen to be deserting the sinking ship. It may only be a matter of perception but as we all know, perception is reality. Here we have a team in complete disarray, beaten twice in Perth (usually a fortress), going through an enormous period of change and uncertainty and the skipper takes a break at the height of the crisis. It just doesn’t look good. It's all about timing.

If this break had been scheduled all along and communicated to the public, Ponting’s absence from the frontline would not be questioned. After all, Cricket Australia has known the itinerary for months now and they must have foreseen Ponting’s workload issues. Why didn’t they plan a break for him and announce it a week ago? Ponting has every right to a break from the game but it could have been handled better. To take an unscheduled break at this particular point of the season when they have just lost four games on the trot and are crying out for leadership is just poor timing.

Cricket is not war. It’s merely a game. Let’s not get too carried away with military analogies. But for a team and a system that thrives on talking in military-style jargon to justify their take-no-prisoners attitude, the comparisons are worth noting. Would an army general have picked this moment to leave the trenches and spend some time with the wife and kids? Would someone like Allan Border have allowed himself to be rested at this moment in time? He spent a large part of his career in trench warfare, back to the wall, finger in the dyke, leading from the front, bruised, bloodied but unbowed. It was impossible not to follow him into battle because his mates knew that he was always leading the way when things got tough. We’re only guessing but I daresay AB would have point blank refused to leave the team under these circumstances. “Over my dead body” and all that.

In this case, perhaps a white lie might have been a better PR strategy. A mystery virus or a sore hamstring or a flare-up of the wrist injury – it would have achieved the same purpose without the inevitable questions about deserting the troops.

There will be people who live normal lives and work 60+ hour weeks on a standard wage who will question why an athlete needs a rest when they essentially ‘work’ every few days anyway. They will question whether these same athletes will rediscover their freshness when IPL time comes around. Perhaps these ‘normal’ folk don’t understand the demands of modern sport. Perhaps they’re too busy working to need a rest. The general public are certainly starting to question the whole 'poor, weary, overworked athlete' thing now. Especially in a recession when money is tight and jobs are under threat at the same time as IPL auctions are being held. It's all about timing.

If Ponting was forced into taking this rest, Cricket Australia has done his reputation a disservice. If Ponting requested it, his management or the corporate PR machine should have suggested a press release that will see him taking a break after the next game, win, lose or tie. It looks better that way. As Ponting knows full well, it’s all about timing.